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It’s what my latest client says to herself before she launches into a hard set. It’s an affirmation, a choice to do what is within her power to create the results she wants. Once it’s said, the job is as good as done. It’s a forgone conclusion, a certainty.

But what makes her so sure?

What is it that gives absolute certainty to any course of action producing a specific result?

It’s two things actually. The knowledge of the cause and effect relationships that govern the result you want to achieve combined with the knowledge that you have all the resources required to take the necessary cause actions.

So how does this relate to muscle gain and fat loss?

Well in an endevour where the rate of failure to achieve the desired result is around 90%+, there is clearly a lack of certainty when people set out to lose body fat and gain lean muscle.

In a nutshell the vast majority of people will set out with no idea of how it all really works. They may have been told certain things but because they don’t understand the various cause and effect relationships of fat loss and muscle gain there is always a nagging doubt about whether what they are doing is right. This leads them to follow even a good program less strictly because why should they follow something that deep down they know nothing about. Conversely it can cause them to follow unsound advice because it has been sold to them and pitched to appeal to their human desire for a quick fix.

The good news though is once you acquire knowledge of the various cause and effect relationships that govern fat loss and muscle gain you are set. Why? Because the second part of having the resources to take the necessary cause actions are available to just about everyone. It all just becomes a matter of choice. You can do it – if you want to.

Gone are the days where you have to ‘struggle’ with a fat loss plan, confused and wondering in the back of your mind whether it will work. A lot will depend on your luck and ability to sift through the conflicting and contradictory messages being thrown at you before you even begin. When you start you will have to rely on your best guess to not get suckered in when things get tough. The odds are heavily stacked against you when no one has bothered to tell you the honest truth.

Once you know the key foundation principles though, it is no longer a matter of ability, it is simply a matter of choice. When you have the secrets of how your body actually works, a lean muscular body can be yours, and will be yours with absolute certainty if you choose.

Their target muscle was biceps. They knew this and understood the muscle function and reinforced the importance of keeping the upper arms still and isolating the biceps muscle before each exercise to each other. They knew what exercises they were going to do and why plus the finer technical points of each exercise. They focused and went about their sets with concentration and intensity, pushing past pain and discomfort, keeping good form to hit the muscle with good overload to stimulate the adaptive response. They kept their talk to the workout and observed and fed back to each other information to help improve their execution – they paid attention. They used a small selection of exercises each with a specific purpose knowing that the biceps is only a small muscle and doesn’t need much when you do things properly with good intensity.

Then they will rest and come back and do it all again according to their schedule – because they know how important it is to be consistent.

This is what productive training really is, the above is what it looks like. The problem is that the reason I found all of the above noteworthy is because in my long days spent at the gym week in week out, year after year, it’s actually pretty rare to see truly productive training in full flight.

Sure you will see people heaving and grunting away but do they understand what they are doing and why? How about the biological mechanisms for muscle growth? Do they understand muscle function and actions? Do they actually understand proper technique and how to execute, correct and improve it? Do they mentally focus? Do they work with true intensity to stimulate an adaptive response? Are they consistent and have a steady plan that will allow them to progress and achieve the body they want? This is before we even get into the nutrition and lifestyle aspects of the puzzle.

Getting the body you want doesn’t come from just training.

It comes from first understanding your body and then by extension the various facets of productive training. Only then will you be able to make specific training decisions that are each backed with a specific purpose in mind – there will be a scientific physiological reason for every exercise choice, rep range and style of execution. Once have this solid, considered plan in place, all that remains is to execute it and reap the results.

It’s very simple really. If you cannot explain exactly what you are doing in your training and the specific reasons why, you will never reach your ultimate potential. When you don’t know much you can’t go far.

When I show someone my food for the day or explain to them the truth of what it takes to get results, most people invariably think that it is tough, challenging, hard and takes discipline, willpower and fanaticism to do what I do. How our society get so brainwashed into thinking this way about preparing and eating a few simple meals of brown rice vegetables and meat is beyond words.

Yes there are hard things in life. I would consider something like climbing Everest as hard or living in Darfur as terribly hard but being lucky enough to buy some and cook clean food and shock horror eat the same thing 4 times in a day somehow makes me some sort of heroic freak to the masses who have been lied to and can’t get the body they want.

The reality is that people have been lied to with regard to how hard getting a lean muscular body for life is and it becomes a self fulfiling prophecy. The companies then can sell you an ‘easy way’ out of the ‘hard’ situation facing you.

Look at it objectively. Is learning how your body works then eating clean and training smart so hard? How tough are people doing it around the world in warzones and dozens of other countries where life is an ordeal?

The fact of the matter is that losing fat and gaining muscle is not hard. They require knowledge and willingess to take action but nothing more. Once you make the choice to transform your body, all you need to do is learn how to create the changes you want and then just do it. There is no inherent difficulty just a simple series of cause and effect processes that you undertake to get what you want.

You either create the body you want or you don’t. Not because it is too hard but because deep down, despite what you may think, you don’t want to change enough to make the choice of a lean muscular body for life.

Losing fat and gaining muscle is not hard. Never was and never will be.

This slogan is the slogan for a famous cereal brand and is the precise formula that many companies have discovered to spin junk into gold. It doesn’t require any proof and caters to the most base human laziness with such microscopic precision that the whole idea of marketing food as ‘healthy’ has to be the most effective marketing strategy in human history.

Diet drinks, “low fat” processed junk, low carb everything and pseudo “health food” that will get your body nowhere; the list just keeps getting longer because society will believe anything and buy anything – as long as they are told it’s healthy. It’s all social conditioning indoctrinated into use from when we are young. To have any hope you MUST break free and be able to think for yourself and feed your body on your own terms to make it look how you want.

I was asked today whether crumpets were healthy. I guess despite the marketing there still must be some doubts, but more telling is that it is strong enough to create the belief that crumpets are a health food (though I can’t say I understand how that logic was reasoned personally). Thinking back I seem to recall seeing ‘low fat’ on a packet once – maybe that was it, if not the smiling Mr Crumpet on the packet perhaps? Either is equally likely and I could spend all day trying to figure out the logic, but I won’t.

Anyway, I asked what the person meant and why were they asking me why if crumpets of all things were healthy (hoping in all my research that somehow beyond all boundaries of this reality that I would say yes?). I discovered that their goal was to “bulk up” whereupon I suggested they look at more natural foods such as sweet potato etc for their carbs. “Why not just crumpets?” I was asked, “carbs are the same aren’t they?” Well no I explained, if we want to be a bit more specific I assume that they wanted to put on quality muscle mass not just get fat then they need a specific nutritional plan to do the job – not just vague tips and if their starting point is crumpets, they probably need some good detailed advice. I don’t know whether they fully understood the need to be specific, precise and consistent.

This is a perfect illustration of how the advertising and social conditioning robs so many of getting the body they want. To get the body you want, at the most basic level you need to eat clean natural food that is specific, precise and consistent. You need to create a food plan to get you where you want to go WITHOUT the need to feel like you must include certain foods or the false beliefs that the foods the marketers sell to you are created to be specifically tailored towards helping you towards your goals.

All those ‘low fat’ ‘healthy’ snacks aren’t created because they want to help you get the body you want – they are made because they know you are confused, frustrated, craving and feeling insecure or guilty about your body and are thus vulnerable and (temporarily) dumb enough to buy it. They don’t care about your results. They are telling you its healthy because they want you to buy it, not because it is. Think about it: THEY are telling you – the people with a specific vested financial interest in you purchasing the product.

The marketers will continue to tell us as long as there are people who desparately want to believe in another way apart from the truth that simply doesn’t exist. The only way to break the cycle is to stop listening. The only way to stop listening is to first stop believing that there is another way. There isn’t. You will only become a lean muscualr version of yourself if you also do the specific things that everyone else who has achieved the body they want for life.

This may seem daunting and overwhelming (but it really isn’t when you know how and have a system) so why am I telling you? Because I have no junk to sell you that I have to lie and defraud you into thinking it’s ‘healthy’. All I have is the truth to share. Your choice: get the results you have always wanted or keep buying what they sell you – after all it is “healthy…”

What is healthy?

The two most common questions I get asked each and every day without fail. But these two questions are concrete proof that most of the so called ‘fitness information’ out there. It’s information overload and most of it is not good information at that. In fact what is passed off as information or tips are merely commercial messages to get you to think a certain way that will you lead you to buy their product. The rest is basically opinions on various subjects that will vary widely in relevance to you. Though an article might be well researched and informative, all too often it is not directly relevant to your unique situation.

To succeed in developing the lean muscular body you want you only to know one thing. No other area of knowledge matters.

All that you need is the specific knowledge of how YOUR body sheds body fat and builds muscle best. All that you need to know is how to get yourself results.

That’s it. Nothing else. It doesn’t matter what the latest fad or research is unless there is something that is specifically relevant to your unique physiology. Someone else’s opinion on what you ‘should do’ or what they do has no bearing unless it is clear that it will specifically help YOU to burn fat and build muscle better.

What you really need is not opinions but a concrete understanding of how the human body works in factual scientific terms of losing body fat and gaining muscle. Then you need to apply this broader knowledge to discover what methods work specifically for you.

You see there is no way anyone can tell you what you should do unless they have a through understanding of your unique physiology. But once you know the biological science behind fat loss and muscle gain and how to eat, train and live your life according to what needs to be done, that’s it.

Forget about sifting through piles of online and offline information and just learn about the scientific basic facts of how human’s lose fat and build muscle and work on understanding the best ways for you to do both through practical application. You don’t need to know about everything, just how to get results.

Remember muscle growth and fat loss is simple – stimulus and adaptation. That’s it. When you are doing an exercise, the only objective is the correct stimulus of the target muscle – not how many reps or the weight. Remember, there is no seated row or heaving DB curl world championship with vast sums of prize money at stake. Yet go into any gym and it seems like that someone forgot to tell a lot of the guys in there who seem to be honing their skills for such an event.

In order for the target muscle to grow it must be correctly stimulated. Lifting a weight gives some stimulus but over time if technique is poor and the muscles are not stimulated correctly, all that happens is that you will adapt to “get better” at performing that exercise poorly. Your strength curve and motor patterns – how your muscles fire and move will be imprinted with the pattern of how to do a really bad lat pull down really well. You will get strong biceps, traps and whatever you use but this will further impede your ability to hit the target muscle (lats) as everything else is stronger. It becomes the weakest link and your body likes to do things the easy way. From there it’s a hard job to play catch-up.

This doesn’t mean that you must or should always use textbook picture perfect form and pink vinyl dbs. (Although I was recently shown a set of rotator cuff exercises using 2kg dbs that was enough to destroy a 100kg+ ex-special forces soldier – this goes to show that anything done properly with intensity will work the body hard) It’s also not an argument about loose vs. strict form. The key is knowing what you are doing, why and how to execute your plan.

If you are going for maximal overload then be specific – it’s not about heaving up a bunch of weight to look tough. You are specifically trying to bullseye the target muscle with a heavier weight than would otherwise be possible with strict form. Controlled momentum and/or using other muscles to get past the sticking points of the movement whilst hitting the target muscle is the name of the game. A slow eccentric phase or lowering under control is a must to get the most out of a heavier weight – you are stronger in this phase so keep it tight.

If your goal is maximal occlusion, make sure you pick a weight that you don’t have to heave – you know what you are doing and why so don’t worry what the weight ‘looks like’. Keep the tension on, feel every inch and fibre scream and forget about the reps – have a target range and get there at all costs and then some if you have anything left.

Technique is a non-negotiable and it’s not about going light. If you don’t have rock solid form you are never going to squat double body weight or dead lift serious weight. Yes power lifters are strong use suits and have different goals but they know that in order to get what they want technique matters.