Initially I wasn’t keen on having a personal trainer, but my wife was gung ho about it. I kept saying to myself “what can a trainer really do for me that I’m not doing already?” But we still signed up with someone (this person even came recommended by others). 3 months later and the only results I saw were some strength gain, but no real visual difference (despite a 5lbs loss). For my wife it was worse – after 4 months with this trainer and repeatedly asking for explanations regarding exercise and meal plan selections to no avail, we finally had it with him.

It was time for serious research. We realized we wanted someone who can work with us through e-mail, but that was close enough for 1-on-1 sessions, should we need them. We wanted someone who is certified and been around for a while (not just someone who “looks the part”). We also realized that there are many different certifications out there (among which, we found out that NASM CPT/PES/CES certifications are considered to be the holy grail in this field, all of which David holds). We wanted someone who is meticulous, detail oriented and can explain *why* certain choices are made regarding exercise routines and meal plans. We were looking for someone who can -no, someone who *will*, take the time to educate us on exercising correctly and efficiently, coupled with nutritional education.

There are so many fitness programs out there, each one claiming to be the best – and each one of them seems to be a “one solution fits all”. The same goes for nutrition plans… But people are different and have different needs. I used to have lower back problems. My wife used to have constant cravings. How does one know which program is best? And even when it comes to gyms – people have access to different equipment at different gyms. How do we sort out all of this stuff?

When we first reached out to David and Nikki we received a questionnaire – an extremely detailed one. It went into details such as our exercise history, eating habits, weight history, medical problems, at what pace we’re interested in working in order to get results, and even the simplest question which no trainer has ever asked us: what are our goals? Are we looking to just lose a few pounds, or tone up? Maybe become body builders or just overcome past injuries? This was already a great sign for things to come! None of the other trainers we spoke with have ever asked us any of these questions.

Sure enough, a workout routine and meal plan which was just as detailed was sent to us (along with answers to a plethora of questions we had regarding the program), and it was even customized to deal with each of our individual issues and concerns, not to mention tailored to our specific gym equipment.

Within 5 weeks I dropped from 21% body fat to 11%!!!! Every week that goes by, my wife sees me transform and become more defined in muscle tone. After a couple of months, I had already enough strength gain to support my lower back and never had to look back since – even despite doubling the weights I’m lifting.

It was finally time for a 1-on-1 session. If this is how much progress we could see just over e-mail, what more could we accomplish in person?? The answer was clear after our first session. Of course there’s the regular drive factor – and David knows how to drive his clients!

But, most importantly, we gained INSIGHT and KNOWLEDGE. Insight into the specifics of how certain exercises need to be performed, and why. Knowledge on how different muscle groups work and how each exercise ties into that. Once we started to gain that level of understanding we were able to gain a lot more out of each routine and become more efficient in our workouts, which in turn yielded even faster results.

We’re now on our 4th month into the program and even some of our friends who have seen our transformations and were in complete disbelief initially, have now signed up to work with David and Nikki (some even residing on the other side of the world!) Both my wife and I simply can’t recommend them enough!!!

I arrived at the gym hiding behind my baggiest sweats, unsure of what to expect. David patiently went through my history and it felt weird why this stranger wanted to know so much about me. I guess I had never met anyone before that cared about their client. I don’t have an athletic background and had never lifted serious weights before. The first training session I silently went through the motions and looked incredulously at David every time he moved the pin to a heavier weight. But he believed I could do it, and he was there to support me if I faltered.

His wife Nikki helped plan my diet and cardio, however it was not like she gave me a plan and forgot about it. She always followed through, was very responsive, motivated me when times were tough, listened patiently to my rants, and kicked my ass when I truly got lazy. I can sing her praises all day. To say that David and Nikki are personal trainers is an understatement. They will change your life and take you places you never thought you could go before. This ability to push and believe in yourself spreads to other aspects of your life. You will learn to have less tolerance for bullshit and want better things for yourself.

Once you meet them you will know that they are truly invested in their client’s journey, and that they love seeing them succeed. Yes I did cheat at times, and still fall off the wagon occasionally, but David and Nikki are always there to get me back on track. I am now more fit than I ever was and excited to continue to see my body transform.

Sarah H.

Time will not, however, help us out upon request.  “Wait up a second…”– time doesn’t have a second to spare.  “If you could give me just a moment…”– time has no moments to give.  Time just marches on, it just is, and we have to fit into it.  In this sense, time is not a sympathetic friend.

There are no dress rehearsals in this world.  There are no practices.  There are no second chances.  Every time you put that bar on your back, and every step you take, and every word you place on paper, is there forever.  There is no editing that.  There is no reversing that. There is no reversing anything.  In this sense, time can be incredibly harsh and cruel– it is an impartial judge, unwilling to budge in the least.  It does not allow for do-overs.

Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity,
To seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment,
Would you capture it, or just let it slip?…
You better lose yourself in the music, the moment,
You own it, you better never let it go.
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow,
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.
(Eminem, “Lose Yourself”)

In the above sense, there are no practice hits; every hit goes down in the books.  There are no mistakes, only failures– failure to do what you said you would do.  Time moves in a singular direction.  And you are the totality of the reps, steps, words and moments that led to this instant.  Each one matters, each one counts.  Every moment of your existence requires some degree of “motivation”, in the sense that you have to find reason, or justification, for putting forth the energy to do something.  The alternative is to do nothing.  “Life is a process of self-generated, self-sustaining action” (Ayn Rand).  And to that end, we find the answer to the question posed by my friend from my column several months back (Determination)– “I totally understand the need/desire to constantly seek the best within yourself, but doesn’t everyone need a break sometime?”  And the answer to that, quite literally, is: sure, when you’re dead– when time has left you in its wake, and continued to move forward without you.

…but…

But what about beginnings?  We all love fresh beginnings.  Everybody loves a good do-over.  And while there are technically no such things as do-overs, in another sense, life is an infinite series of do-overs.  Time is nothing but a sequence of moments repeating ad infinitum, a never-ending reel of opportunities to try your hand again at something, to practice and perfect and get better at and excel at some activity.  Because we have the capacity to carve time into chunks and segments inside our minds, we can view a series of missed opportunities as a singular period, or practice run, necessary in order to finally achieve our goal.

The easiest way to track the story of our lives is by carving it into larger headings, into chapters or epochs.  And each chapter needs a heading, an opening line…

…So we begin our paragraphs, our sentences– our “new periods” of success– with clearly-delineated sentences– –such as, “Today, January 1st, 2011, is the first day of me being successful.  January 1st, 2011, is the first day of the rest of my life. I resolve to finally accomplish my goal”.

A resolution is the grand-daddy of do-overs, the final do-over committing to no more do-overs.  It is commitment to the notion that there are no more dress rehearsals, that every moment matters, and that it’s time to ensure you quit repeating the same mistakes, you quit asking time to wait up, to spare a second, and instead, jump on board the train marching tirelessly towards its destination.

New Year’s Day– and resolutions, in general– are both potentially awesome and frightening.  On the one hand, it’s the biggest “beginning” of the year.  It is the official “Day of the Do-Over”, your public chance to call the last year, or several years, a dress rehearsal, a mere practice prior to this year, this moment in time, when life will truly begin, when you will stop trying to be successful and actually be successful, when you will stop wishing for greatness and actually hold onto greatness.  New Year’s Day gives people that blank page needed, that fresh chapter heading– “And now, we enter this stage”.

But at the same time, it’s just another day, like any other day, filled with moments, like all the other moments of the year.  And each moment and each day is a fresh beginning, a new chapter, a blank page that you have to fill with writing.  Even though we carve it up in our minds for the sake of cognitive clarity, time is not there to be carved or split or manhandled.  It is a juggernaut endlessly striving.  And in this sense, New Year’s Day is just another day; and a resolution is not so simple as declaring, “This is now how it will be”, and watching the events fall into place.  Like taking up a new sport, one cannot “resolve” to be great at it and expect instant success; yet one cannot spend the entire game staring at the playbook.  The timer continues to count down the seconds, and the end of the game is right around the corner.  Keep your feet moving, drive towards the goal, and complete that game, that chapter; then look forward to the next game.  Practice, drill, sweat until you have perfected the skill of being skilled per se, of being efficacious, of living within time, rather than watching it from outside, from the sidelines.

Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity,
To seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment,
Would you capture it, or just let it slip?…
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow,
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.
(Eminem, “Lose Yourself”)

Every opportunity comes once in a lifetime.  Resolve, this year, to live every moment with that mindset– to live in the moment, rather than outside of it.

Good luck with this newest chapter, “2011”.  May it be the greatest chapter in your story so far.
-David A. Johnston
12-31-10

“See, I don’t train for reps, I don’t train for time. I train for failure. I like to see my body fail. I like to stay in bed for a whole day because that’s how tired I am from working.” – Ray Lewis – Baltimore Ravens

We have had it hammered into our heads that failure is okay. Over the last decade, the politically-correct thinkers out there, full of nothing but love for their children, have removed “rules” and “points” and “winners” and “losers” and “grades” from sports and schools and just about any activity conceivable, so as to not shatter poor Johnny’s fragile ego.

The first step towards accomplishment is in identifying that success– achieving goals– matters.

And we see now all around us the result of removing said rules, points, winners, losers, grades. We see not one, but generation after generation getting progressively softer, slower, fatter, lazier, whinier, rotting at our cores. We see that the supposed rally to protect self-esteem, by means of removing the necessary cause of self-esteem, has led to a world where there is no concept of “worth”, and no concept of “esteem”. Nothing matters when everything is equal.

The second step towards accomplishment is in identifying that because success matters, failure is not okay. It is to be avoided.

One of my clients this week informed me that her sister, a grade school teacher, now has to allow her students continued chances to re-write their papers for class. If a paper is written and submitted– and is poorly done– the kid can then rewrite it (with the teacher’s comments in mind, of course), and then rewrite it again, and again, and again, until it is perfect. This client of mine joked, “I plan to attend a school board meeting when my daughter begins school, and inform them that my child is not allowed do-overs”. Nothing quite as fantastic as breeding the mentality that you will be allowed an infinite number of chances at mediocrity.

So I began to approach the world with the idea that failure is not okay– that doing “just enough” is not enough. I, too, have approached the high dive. I, too, saw it as a child, and was scared. I, too, was ashamed that I was scared. I was embarrassed. I knew I was weak. So I forced myself to climb it, again and again and again. And belly flop. And it was painful. But being scared and weak was more painful.

The third step towards accomplishment is in identifying that, in order to have continued success, one must have numerous failures first.

There is not a single pro athlete with a perfect record. No basketball player sunk every shot. No running back scored on every down. No bodybuilder took first in every contest. There is no millionaire with a perfect investment record. There is no beautiful overture that was written perfectly the first time.

I trained a client once, a very accomplished 17 year old soccer player, who started crying halfway through a set of dumbbell shoulder presses. I asked her what was wrong. She told me through tears, “I’m used to succeeded at everything, I’m not used to failing at anything, and you make me fail on every set!”

The fourth and final step towards accomplishment is in embracing failure, actually chasing it, reveling in it, on the understanding that it is necessary for success, that it walks with success, that the two are twins holding hands, and meeting with one means you will have to talk to the other.

My soccer player did not understand that failure, in weight training, is success. She had not reached the fourth step.

Ray Lewis mentions training to failure, making his body fail, and loving exhaustion. Some might call this masochism. Others will recognize it merely as the mindset of a champion. Ray Lewis knows that to fail is to succeed, and therefore, he chases that feeling.

To stare failure in the face, to acknowledge fear and own it and walk with it, to embrace pain as a road to pleasure– these are the means to success. Or you can remove the rules, the points, the winners and losers, and see what happens. I, personally, am not optimistic.

When I took my class at the Maryland State two months ago, as overjoyed as I was– as in-love-with-life as I was at that moment– I remember a surreal feeling that I couldn’t then identify or name. It was a feeling of partial emptiness and sadness. It was the feeling that I had won my class, and therefore had “done good enough”. In a way, it was terrible. For the first time, I was told I had gotten there. It felt like I was being given permission to slow down, to not push so hard.

And I thought to myself: how lucky that I did not win the overall, so now I have a reason to continue pushing. How lucky that I was beaten, because now the next two years of my life will be fueled by a demonic fury to be better, to grow stronger, larger, leaner, to propel myself down a path towards continued success. My failure became a step allowing me to ascend to the next level of success.

I will chase failure, and fear, and pain. I will seek out the things that scare me, and stare them down. I will not be satisfied “conquering fears”, but will instead come to love that which scares the hell out of me. And when I encounter the twins of success and failure, I will court them both, equally, as the two halves of life.

-David A. Johnston

The first time I saw this video, I sat in silence for a good five minutes afterwards, just letting the truth of it flood over me. In working with dozens of personal training clients on a daily basis, the sequence of fast-motion excuses sounded like a synopsis of one of my worst days, minus the counting of repetitions. I was half tempted to send out this video with no commentary whatsoever, as I believe the content speaks for itself. But I have a big mouth, so we know that’s not possible.

Life is a constant, non-stop series of choices, from the moment of birth until the moment of death, a series of competing alternatives that cannot coexist or cohabitate, that you must choose between. In every paired sequence, one is presented with a “simpler” option, and a more “difficult” option. The more difficult is more difficult precisely because it requires more investment– more focus, attention, movement, thought, risk, momentary pain, temporary discomfort, blood, sweat, tears, etc. (insert your own cliché). The easier alternative, by contrast, comes more naturally, with less investment. It pops into one’s field of vision as the preferable, as the path of least resistance; it beckons to the individual with promises of comfort, smoothness, and calm.

I spoke with one of my clients this morning after my competition last night, giving him details of my and Nikki’s achievement. His exact words were: “Dave, you get out of this life what you put into it. Let me repeat that [speaking as slowly as I have ever heard him say anything and emphasizing every… last… word], YOU GET OUT OF THIS LIFE WHAT YOU PUT INTO IT”.

There is always an excuse. There is always a reason to not sweat, to not get involved or invested, to not pursue a higher goal. There is always an alternative that would be more immediately enjoyable, precisely because it would require less risk and less discomfort. Listen specifically to the sequence in the video that says as follows: “I have a case of the Mondays… the Tuesdays… the Wednesdays”. Did you get that? EVERY DAY is a reason to not get sweaty, to not play. Yet some do. Do you?

There will always be upset stomachs, calluses, sprained ankles… children, work, family… diseases, colds, illnesses… holidays, anniversaries, birthday parties, celebrations… work events, life events… identity crises, personal issues, soul searching quests… job changes, promotions, demotions, terminations, lay offs… lateral shifts, transfers, upgrades, downgrades…

There will always be a million and one reasons to not play…

There will always be an excuse…

And some will still play. And some will not. And it’s really as simple as that.

Wanna’ play?

-David A. Johnston

Stop Sign Image borrowed from http://pamelavillars.wordpress.com

“After a while, he realized that he was thinking of his past, as if certain days of it were spread before him, demanding to be seen again. He did not want to look at them; he despised memories as a pointless indulgence. But then he understood that he thought of them tonight in honor of that piece of metal in his pocket. Then he permitted himself to look. He saw the day when he stood on a rocky ledge and felt a thread of sweat running from his temple down his neck. He was fourteen years old and it was his first day of work in the iron mines of Minnesota. He was trying to learn to breathe against the scalding pain in his chest. He stood, cursing himself, because he had made up his mind that he would not be tired. After a while, he went back to his task; he decided that pain was not a valid reason for stopping. He saw the day when he stood at the window of his office and looked at the mines; he owned them as of that morning. He was thirty years old. What had gone on in the years between did not matter, just as pain had not mattered. He had worked in mines, in foundries, in the steel mills of the north, moving toward the purpose he had chosen….

“He saw an evening when he sat slumped across his desk in that office. It was late and his staff had left; so he could lie there alone, unwitnessed. He was tired. It was as if he had run a race against his own body, and all the exhaustion of years, which he had refused to acknowledge, had caught him at once and flattened him against the desk top. He felt nothing, except the desire not to move. He did not have the strength to feel– not even to suffer. He had burned everything there was to burn within him; he had scattered so many sparks to start so many things– and he wondered whether someone could give him now the spark he needed, now when he felt unable ever to rise again. He asked himself who had started him and kept him going. Then he raised his head. Slowly, with the greatest effort of his life, he made his body rise until he was able to sit upright with only one hand pressed to the desk and a trembling arm to support him. He never asked that question again.”

I have spent a lot of time contemplating the source of motivation, the source of action, what inspires people to do what they do. In sales, we are taught that people make decisions, or take actions, based on their emotional responses to things– present an individual with a visually pleasing scenario, and they will automatically respond in a predictable manner.

This is a mechanistic and unflattering view of how humans operate. Perhaps some people are so passive that they live their lives according to knee-jerk reactions, where car commercials and fast-food tag lines drive the motor inside of them. But I refuse to accept that it has to be this way. The above description is basically how dogs operate– they see something they like, and the tail starts a’waggin.

So what does drive people? On what do you base your decisions? When presented with two options, how do you know which one to pick? The obvious answer is, you weigh the relative values of the two options, and chose the one that makes more sense– you make a rational decision based on evidence.

Yeah, but what compelled you to weigh the evidence in the first place? What is the difference between the passive individual that is acted upon by commercials (and the world in general), and the active individual that acts upon the world?

The difference is will. There is no deeper level, no more profound analysis. The former person is choosing– willfully choosing– to not exercise his will, while the latter individual is actively exercising his will.

When you are exhausted, too tired to complete a task that you know needs to be finished– and please don’t take my word, check this on your own– you can succumb to that feeling, or you can shift into the next gear. Most people never scratch the surface of what they are truly capable of accomplishing. There are a surprising number of gears deep within human consciousness, if you decide to search for them.

I am currently in the last stage of my contest prep for the 2010 NPC Philadelphia Bodybuilding show, and I am officially starting to feel like death. Every day gets just a little bit harder, as my calories fall lower, my daily output (cardio/weights/work load) increases, and I can feel my body is starting to shut down. I am clicking off the days on the calendar to ensure that I have enough to get to the stage. Over the weekend, I dropped my food even lower than normal, and could hardly find the energy to put one foot in front of the other while doing my cardio. In part, it was a tactical error, and I realized I was dropping my calories too low, so I fixed that. But in part, I realized I was starting to break down, to fray at the edges, to give in. My head was pinned against the desk, similar to Hank Rearden’s in Atlas Shrugged; I felt I had spread so many sparks to start so many things that I had no spark left to run my own engine.

And I looked around, hoping somebody might lend me that spark. I was motivated in looking at my beautiful wife, and my beautiful daughter– and yes, even a handful of my clients that are currently very successful.

But it wasn’t enough. I needed something more.

I went in this past Wednesday to train legs, still feeling wiped out. I thought about skipping the workout, or maybe dialing back the intensity a touch. I looked in the mirror and realized: right now, 90% of the people getting on stage in 4 weeks are telling themselves the same thing, trying to rationalize and justify why it’s okay at this point to “lighten up a bit”, to “take it a little easier”. That other 10% is what scares me. Somewhere out there, there is an individual I have never met who is investing his life into annihilating me on stage, who is willing to do whatever it takes to be successful.

That individual will find a spark, whether there’s one left or not. He will shift into a higher gear, a gear I haven’t yet discovered, and he will walk onto the stage knowing, with full confidence, that he did everything in his power to be successful.

“Screw it, throw another plate on the bar. I don’t care if I die, I’m finishing this workout”.

Aristotle talked about the “Unmoved Mover”. It was basically his version of God, the thing that made the universe work. The Unmoved Mover was an entity that somehow moved itself, but nothing else could move it, and by virtue of that fact, it never ran out of steam, never tired, never quit. It was the source of all motion and activity in the universe.

Regardless of your spiritual inclinations, I think it’s safe to say that every individual on this planet is an Unmoved Mover. Yes, we are inspired from various corners, we are led down certain paths, but when it comes right down to it, it is us, as individuals, that have to choose whether to walk down that path, that have to choose whether to heed a calling or not.

End of the week, 4 weeks out, and feeling much better than I did beginning of the week. I found that next gear, that spark, and reclaimed my place as an Unmoved Mover within the universe.

David A. Johnston

“A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”– Walter Bagehot

All my life, I’ve been terrible at taking direction, not for lack of intelligence, but lack of understanding why somebody would be interested in doing something simply because “that’s the way that things are done”. Right out of the womb, I had to figure things out the hard way, figure them out on my own, or I couldn’t figure them out at all. If there was a “wrong way” of doing things, I did it, just to see why it was the “wrong way”.

Wearing thermal underwear in the middle of 100-degree Chicago weather in July? I’m going to try it. And shorts in the dead of winter? Sign me up.

I like “learning the hard way”.

I never understood etiquette, or the function of etiquette, or why anybody would want to follow etiquette.

I don’t understand “rules”. I mean, I understand rules of the universe, like gravity, or cause and effect; but I never understood “the rules” that I was expected to play by, the “rules of man” so to speak. I like to view them more as suggestions, and then test them, and break them, with a condescending grin.

At the age of 8, I decided I wanted to grow my hair long because my passion was hard rock music, specifically Guns N’ Roses. My father told me I could do it, so long as I understood that I would have to work that much harder to prove my intelligence to those around me– that I would most likely be perceived as “different”, and possibly “worse”, for choosing something so outside the norm. It has become a cliché in our culture that “perception is reality”. Maybe this is true for those whose reality is dictated exclusively by the opinions of others. To those of independent spirit, reality is reality– or taking it a step further, reality is what you chose to make of it, what you will it to be, not what you chose to let others make of it for you.

When I arrived in Columbia, Maryland, and had to rebuild my personal training business from scratch, the “normal” thing to do would be to present one’s self as approachable and friendly so as to attract as much potential business as possible. And of course, what was my business concept? To grow out a Mohawk and long goatee so as to look as unapproachable as possible. Why? Because I wanted to take the harder path– or more importantly, because I wanted to prove that I could do what people said I could not, and should not, do. I wanted to show that it was irrelevant, that there were more important factors involved in rising to the top and being successful. Within less than a year’s time, I had the top sales record at Lifetime, Columbia, purported “bad attitude” and Mohawk included. All the “perceptions” out there proved to not really be an issue.

This year, I have decided to compete again in several bodybuilding competitions. Prepping for a competition is like a full-time job in and of itself. I have decided to prep, while running a very time-consuming business, and while having a new child at home. I was told several times last year from close friends and family that I might not be able to do it, that I might be stretching too much, that it might be unreasonable to try to accomplish all of these things at once. Being told I couldn’t do it was all the more reason to make it happen.

I am now 10 weeks out from the NPC Philadelphia show on June 26th, and feeling great about my chances at winning.

Indeed, a great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

The self-proclaimed Greatest of All Time:

-David A. Johnston

4/17/2010

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