Moved The Blog

I moved the blog to a different address. Just click on this sentence to go to the new blog.

Then bookmark it for the future.

Thanks for your interest in what I'm doing and have to say.

What Gets Measured Gets Improved

What if you hired me to train you (since this is hypothetical, lets say for an MMA fight) and I didn’t have a plan. I simply free styled every time you came to train. We basically just did whatever popped into my head at that moment. I didn’t take notes or write anything down for that matter. How would you or I know if the next workout was any harder? 

The obvious answer is WE WOULDN’T. 

If we wouldn’t, how can we know if you’re getting any better? Again, WE WOULDN’T.

The two most important concepts to training is HARD WORK and PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD.

If you’re not training hard, you’ll never reach your full potential. If your workouts aren’t progressive (i.e getting harder), then what are you training for?

If you’ve been reading my blog and watching my videos, then you probably know Cliff. He’s training for the tryouts of “The Next Ultimate Fighter” season.

When he came to me for training, we didn’t have any time to waste. His training needed to get progressively more challenging for an adaptation to occur. And that adaptation is to remove the accumulation of waste by-products. In English, it means he won’t gas out during a fight.

Now Cliff’s in his fourth week of training and he’s becoming an ENDURANCE MACHINE. The only way we could get him there was by measuring his workouts. His sets, reps, rest, and frequency of training. 

Unfortunately, we don’t have all the equipment I’d like. If we could’ve been at my performance center in Michigan the training would be sick. But you have to make the best with what you got. 

So check out the latest video of Cliff below.

Becoming An Endurance Machine

Here’s the latest training session with Cliff. He’s making great progress.

Check out the video.




“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”

Dale Carnegie, Author

I can really relate to that quote, and it's exactly what I was talking about in the beginning of the video.

Don't wait for something to be perfect before doing it. We get better at things by taking action, then we learn in the process how to make it better. The name of the game is READY FIRE AIM, not READY AIM FIRE.

God willing, soon I'll be making entertaining videos (at least I'll think so). 

Just something to think about.

Fast Fat Loss With BioSignature

The concept of BioSignature was developed by world-renowned strength coach Charles Poliquin after noticing trends and correlations while working with athletes for nearly 30 years.

BioSignature is a system based on scientific evidence that where you store your body fat is an indication of your hormonal profile. It’s the best non-invasive way of finding out what’s going on inside the body by looking at what’s happening outside the body.

This means that your body fat levels and corresponding imbalanced hormones can be effectively managed through a combination of diet, exercise, a targeted supplementation program, and lifestyle modifications.
There’s 10 sites measured, and 8 of the sites are correlated to a specific hormone. If you want to know what each site is correlated to, check out this video.

I’ve been using BioSignature on my clients now since 2004, and I’ve seen some unbelievable results with it.
If you’ve been following my blog then you probably know who Cliff is. If not, Cliff has been training with me since September 25th for the next season of “The Ultimate Fighter”, and in this short time he’s shown some phenomenal changes with his BioSignature.



Here’s a quick run down on those changes.

Cheek: ↓ 16%
Chin: ↓ 15.8%
Tricep: ↓ 20.4%
Pec: ↑ Went up slightly
Mid-axillary: ↓ 25.8%
Subscapularis: ↓ 16.3%
Supra-illiac: ↓ 29.7%
Umbilicus: ↓ 27%
Knee: ↑ went up slightly
Calf: stayed the same.

His total body fat dropped 2.6%, he didn’t lose any muscle (in fact, it went up slightly even though gaining muscle wasn’t our goal), and he lost roughly 6 to 7 pounds. And we haven’t done any supplement protocols yet. Just made some changes to Cliff’s diet and his training.

So hormonally speaking, Cliff has increased insulin sensitivity, raised his natural testosterone, and has lowered cortisol by cleaning up his diet.

The two main areas Cliff needs to work on is better sleep quality, and cleaning up his liver. This is correlated to his knee and calf readings. It’s no surprise that these two areas need work. Cliff is a manager of a bar and customers often want to buy him drinks, and he always doesn’t have good sleep hygiene from working late hours.

As soon as we put him on a supplement protocol for this, he will see significant progress. But I’m still very pleased with his progress so far.

Be Careful Who You Listen To

I found this video on Eric Cressey’s blog. A great strength coach who’s blog I read daily.

This is why the title “personal trainer” is an insult to me. You often get idiots like this lady. Be careful who you talk to in regards to training. Because someone like this could be the provider of bad info.


Laugh Away Your Abs - Watch more free videos

Now ask yourself. If you’re a man, would you want to train like the video above… Or would you rather train like a real man and actually get results. Check out the video below.



It’s a no brainer right?

PS. The last video was taken at my training facility in Michigan before I moved back to Chicago. You don’t see me in it much because I’m the one filming.

The Dead Treadmill Run: Drop Body Fat Fast And Improve Conditioning

I’m not a fan of treadmills or any other machine for cardio for that matter. I’d much rather be outside doing sprints if I’m gonna run. The ground doesn’t move under you when you move, you move over the ground. There’s a huge difference with what’s going on physiologically. That’s why running outside will beat running on a treadmill every time.

I also use the term “cardio” loosely because most people think it only means aerobic-based training, and that’s not the case.

Sometimes you might not be able to get outside because of the weather or lack of time. That’s two reason why I might have someone run on a treadmill. But I have them do it without turning it on.

Doing it this way will force your legs to power the treadmill instead of the engine with you just picking up your feet.
You’ll also save a lot of time and get better results than simply jogging at a comfortable speed for longer durations, which also happens to be the worst training modality to lose body fat. And you certainly won’t improve your conditioning if your an MMA fighter or in the grappling sports. It’s just far to easy.

Remember, the two most important words when it comes to training is “HARD WORK”. If it was easy, everyone would be in great shape.

Here’s a quick video of Cliff performing the dead treadmill run.



This was done after he did three different circuits with weights with minimal rest times between exercises and sets.

The first week we finished the training session with only one set of the dead tread run. Now he’s up to three.

20 second run as fast as possible
Rest 80 seconds (we started at 120 seconds)

The Albert Einstein Of My Industry

I know I've mentioned Charles Poliquin quite a few times in my blogs, website, and videos. That's because he's the best in my industry. I've been studying everything I could get my hands on since high school, which is roughly 18 years now. I continue to invest in my education by attending seminars, by books, and reading / learning everything that other great strength coaches are doing and that work. There are many great coaches out there that I study, but Poliquin blows everyone away in my book.



Something that's been happening in my industry for awhile now is this "functional training" movement. I usually refer to it as "circus training" because it's a joke. People are so adamant on being creative that they forget about results. Just like throwing out the baby with the bath water.



Here's a quick article that Poliquin just wrote on the subject.

Learning From Exercise Bloopers

by Charles Poliquin

I believe that if a strength coach is serious about becoming the best they can be in their profession, they have to make reading a regular habit. Whether it is through books, magazines or websites, the education of a strength coach does not end after a certification or college degree is earned. Much of the material I read comes from studies in peer-reviewed journals, which by their nature can be rather dry. But learning does not necessarily have to be boring.



The Internet is a great way to not only acquire information but also share a laugh. Because I have PICP coaches in 40 countries, I get a lot of e-mails from all corners of the globe. Many of these include links to video clips that are informative and, in many cases, hilarious. What I'd like to do is share with you, through the phenomenon of YouTube.com, real-life examples that dispel three common myths about training.

Myth 1: Functional training is far better than classical strength training.

"Functional training," the latest buzzword in strength coaching, is gradually moving ahead of the nationwide obsession with core training. Its origins can be traced to rehabilitation, and it involves performing exercises that transfer best to returning to daily activity or athletic performance. Often, much of this type of training is based upon specialized cable exercises, medicine balls, and balance movements on rocker boards.



Asian martial arts masters were reputed to have gotten their ideas from studying animal fighting, hence names for techniques like "Tiger Claw" and "Donkey Kick." I have a theory that "functional trainers" also tried to use the same concepts by spending time at the zoo to develop their system. Look at their calves - they look like they got their loading parameter concepts from studying the legs of parrots!



Perhaps they have an issue with building muscle mass or getting strong? Anyway, here is a link to a video showing one type of silly functional exercise to develop "explosive power" (as opposed to nonexplosive power?) in the upper body:

YouTube Video Link - Click Here

Besides promoting bizarre exercises such as that one, see what some misguided trainers have done to a great Olympic lifting exercise such as the clean:

YouTube Video Link- Click Here

Is this supposed to be the type of training that will enable athletes to fulfill their physical potential? What is wrong with simply performing the exercise with a barbell as it has been done for the past century?



The collective mantra of functional trainers is "train movements, not muscles." When someone asks me if I believe that functional training will replace classical strength training, I reply, "Functional training is like Capoiera, and classical strength training is like boxing." Check out this video, which dramatically illustrates this concept:

YouTube Video Link - Click Here

Misconception #2: Single-joint movements are useless for athletes.

Last March I spoke at a great conference in Colorado hosted by PTontheNET.com called "Meeting of the Minds." It involved many leaders in the industry, each talking for 20 minutes about their practices and how they could help owners of gym chains who were in attendance.



One speaker, sporting linguini arms, told the audience that isolation exercises and even some compound movements (such as the bench press) were basically evil. He suggested that we should forget about barbells and dumbbells and use the nylon contraption he sold. This device supposedly was the training secret of the Navy Seals. I heard the same type of crap from an Aussie physiotherapist at FitPro 2008 who said that athletes don't need to perform exercises such as curls.


Or in the case of a more famous individual, perhaps soccer superstar Michael Owen might have avoided injury with some Petersen step-ups. Check this out:

YouTube Video Link - Click Here

Any serious strength coach knows that weakness in a single muscle can limit performance - which is why I spend so much time in my PICP courses talking about structural balance. When I was introduced to powerlifting guru Louie Simmons through US hammer throw champion Jud Logan, we rapidly found out that we both espoused the structural-balance concept in developing maximal strength.



Misconception 3: Chains work for every exercise.

Thanks to innovative individuals such as Louie Simmons and Nautilus founder Arthur Jones, chains have become a valuable way to accommodate what is called an ascending strength curve.



When an exercise is said to have an ascending strength curve, the exercise becomes easier towards the end range of the movements; you'll find such varying torque capabilities in squats, presses and deadlifts. When an exercise is said to have a descending strength curve, the exercise becomes harder during the end of the movement; you'll find descending strength curves in such exercises as chin-ups, rows and leg curls.



Unfortunately, the concept of using chains to accomplish an ascending strength curve is now being applied in every single exercise by dorks who don't understand their application at all. In the following video, you'll see a guy applying them to what may as well be termed the "Borat curl" or the "Kazahkstan good morning."

YouTube Video Link - Click Here

By the way, it is rumored that this individual was listening to Barry Manilow's "Copacabana" on his headset to acquire that glaring intensity.



Now I feel better: I've gotten some of my pet peeves about the industry off my chest. And I must mention that my partners in crime for these videos are South African bodybuilding champ Nicole Acker, equipment salesman extraordinaire Jim Fischer and PICP coach Antonio Gummels.

To read more great articles by Charles Poliquin, visit his site at charlespoliquin.com.

Naga Conditioning Week 2: Forcing The Desired Adaptation

This is for all the NAGA guys coming to the conditioning class, for those that missed this week, and anyone else interested in great training.

Real quick, here’s what we’re doing and why it works.

There are three main energy systems and each one has two components; power and capacity. Depending on what energy system that’s being trained and if you want complete or incomplete recovery, would dictate how long to rest between sets.

Since we want to force an adaptation to remove the accumulation of fatigue substrates, we want incomplete recovery.

Normally you want about 8 to 12 weeks to train this. But we don’t have that luxury. We started the first week with a 3:30 rest (I normally start with 4 minutes) because you guys have better conditioning than Joe Average. This was still to long, so I lowered it to 3 minutes.

This week, we lowered it to 2:45 rest between sprints. This will work REALLY WELL if you can do the workout one more time during the week. I like Wednesday because of where it falls in the week in relation to the saturday session. Just make sure you do the workout several hours before or several hours after any other training session that you do on that day. So if you do a jui-jitsu class, kickboxing class, or anything else, make sure you don’t do them to close together. 

Remember, you have to be able to recover from your workouts and they shouldn’t last any longer than an hour because of stress hormones. Training them to close together would be like one big loooong workout from the lack of rest time and recovery between sessions.

If you’re pulling hamstrings, this often because of a magnesium deficiency. If you’re taking a multi vitamin with magnesium in it, it’s still not enough magnesium. It doesn’t matter how good the multi is (centrum sucks and just gives you expensive urine). You need to take around 1 gram. I like my athletes to take 500 mg at dinner and another 500 mg just before bed. This will also improve your sleep quality (I've found that magnesium glycinate works the best for this).

Other reasons for pulling muscles while sprinting is muscular imbalances. Unilateral exercises along with proper stretching and soft tissue work can help tremendously but would take to long to explain in the scope of this post (let me know if you want help with training and I can write you workouts that will help you).

Here’s a quick video of the training session performed this past Saturday.

The Kaizen Principle: Constant And Never-Ending Improvement

The word kaizen comes from the Japanese language and means "constant and never-ending improvement. They adopt this philosophy with everything in their lives. That's why they were able to come from a war-torn country to an economic power after world war II. 

This philosophy is arguably the most important rule in the weight room if you want to keep seeing results. Anyone that first starts training will see improvement. But what do you do once you hit a stale mate? 

Most people I witness training don't write down what they do, don't have a plan, and make jumps in weight from one set to the next with a ridiculous poundage. The guy at the gym that's barely able to bench 135 pounds for 10 reps, and then decides to throw on an additional forty pounds on his next set. Obviously he doesn't have a rep range he's shooting for since he has no plan. But somehow he thinks he'll get more reps than is possible.

I see this constantly and it boggles my mind why. It's not rocket science. You don't have to be smarter than Steven Hawking.

If you want to continue to see results in the weight room, you're going to have to coax the body into it. This will require small incremental poundages, that overtime, will add up to a lot. 

For instance, If you could put just five pounds on your squat every other week and you trained for a year, this would add up to 130 pounds. If you try to go up in weight to fast like most people do, you could get plateaued for a long time.

Your workouts have to be progressive. The only way I know how to do this is by measuring what you do. Writing it down every time and attempting to beat it every time. Adopting the kaizen principle. 

You won't always succeed every time you train and it doesn't have to be just about lifting more weight.

Right now I'm training some jiu jitsu competitors for the NAGA (North American Grapplers Association). With their workout, the progression is based off of rest intervals. Every week, I shave some time off their rest between sprint intervals. Their bodies are forced to adapt and become more efficient at removing waste by-products and, therefore, attenuating fatigue. The progressions in the rest, not the weight.

I can do this because I have a plan and it's measured. A chimp could give you a hard workout. But who's to say that the next training session will be progressive. Know one can answer that unless it's measured. We'll, maybe Stephen Hawking.

The kaizen principle is all about having goals and being able to measure them. And it can be adopted for just about everything.

Use it, and don't be a chimp.

You Remember Cliff Right?

The last video of Cliff we tested how conditioned he was by doing a death circuit of four exercises with 60 seconds rest between sets. 

It was a little to much, so we reduced the circuit to two exercises with 75 seconds of rest between the two. Then we reduced the rest down to 60 seconds on the next workout.

He did fine. 

So this workout, we add an additional exercise making it three within each circuit, and give Cliff 60 seconds of rest.

We also added in an additional set of the dead treadmill run. Keep in mind, we’re limited in training equipment and time. So we have to make due with what we have.

Check out the video.



Any questions in regarding Cliff’s training or any questions about training / nutrition is much appreciated.

Stay Focused,
Chris Grayson