The following was sent to my email list on August 18th, 2023. The response rate was ridiculous, so I am publishing it here. If you’d like to join 100,000 others. Subscribe to our newsletter and download our Nutrition Setup Guide pdf here. 👇 I offended a newsletter subscriber this week. …
Upset Reader Quiz — Can you spot what he’s doing wrong? Read More »
“Is somebody with your same skill set and knowledge currently achieving more than you are? — If your answer is yes, then a mindset issue is holding you back.” 👆 Itamar’s opening words felt like a gut punch, a feeling I have gotten used to over the last four years. “Mindset …
Crafting an Elite Mindset — Lessons From the Israeli Special Forces and Mossad (Seminar) Read More »
Naoto, our Japanese coach over on AthleteBody.jp, has developed quite a reputation within the bodybuilding community in Japan for building champions. There are many lessons I could draw from this experience, but the most relevant is: If you want to succeed in cutting to shreds by a fixed time point, …
It’s not often I get nervous writing an email, but yesterday was one of those times. I asked a client if I could share his results, and I am delighted that he said yes. This is Lynn. Or rather, this was Lynn in June of 2020. Lynn had been overweight his entire life. The …
“Andy, everyone tells me my calories are too low, but I’m not losing weight.I’m 6’2″, 200lbs, and I cycle 40 minutes to work and back each day, and I play tennis or hit the gym 6 days a week. I’m consistently eating between 1800 to 2000 calories each day.Am I …
Can’t Lose Weight? You’re Eating More Than You Think Read More »
Meet Rick. When we began working together in November, Rick weighed 231 pounds. He said, “I really just wanted to be able to go to the public pool and play with my boys without being embarrassed to take my shirt off.” 8 months later, Rick weighed 187 pounds. That’s 44 …
My write-up about Steve’s recomp results that I shared last week was a hit. You loved the level of detail. So as promised, here’s another… I’m often asked whether it’s possible to achieve a good physique after 40, 45, or 50? (Whatever age the person asking me happens to be.) 👉 Hell yes, you can! I …
If I told you that one of my clients, Steve, lost only 8 lbs in 9 months, you might consider that a poor result. But look at the difference! Clearly, there was more than just 8 lbs of fat loss. But how much? How can we tell? What are the lessons here? …
Steve’s Recomp: Results, Macros, and Training, Fully Explained Read More »
Last week, I ended our group coaching program, ‘The Ripped Body Cut Club.’ This may come as a surprise. It was during a week I announced to my email list that I was accepting applications for the second cohort of members. But it was the right thing to do for …
I’m occasionally asked why we only take on male clients, understandably so, and I want to give a detailed answer on camera because I think my female audience deserves one. Now I could sit here and tell you that the reason I choose to work with men, is because I …
I nearly quit the industry 9 years ago because of a small group of very vocal haters. There were people who could not stand that I was blogging about Martin Berkhan’s Leangains principles, and they used to cuss me out endlessly on Reddit. There was a guy who ran a …
Why I Nearly Quit the Fitness Industry Because of Haters Read More »
It’s not so much that I don’t work with CrossFitters but that I want to be able to control the training inputs. A lot of fitness classes (all kinds, not just CF classes) are about getting people to work hard, sweat, and feel good afterward But how much you sweat…
“I’ve coached over 1000 people in the last 7 years of working online. You know the biggest lesson I have learned from all of that experience? 👉🏻 The value of keeping things as simple as possible for people. Set things up in a way you can sustain – Two big…
Many people have told me that they appreciate my objective, unbiased approach to exercise and nutrition. I’m going to tell you right now, though, that I am not unbiased. In fact, I’m very biased. I’m biased towards science. As a scientist myself, I am, by default, very biased towards science, and…
I’d like to share some of those longer-term client success stories today from the past year and I thank them for giving their permission to do so. In 2016 I started working with people for longer than a three month period. It has enabled me to get to know my…
It gives me great pleasure to share these four client stories because two of them aren’t mine. I had Ken translate every email back and forth between our Japanese clients for three years before letting him coach clients on his own. In hindsight, this may have been an overly lengthy…
Not long ago, I found myself getting grilled on Facebook over the concept of hypertrophy training. “Strength and hypertrophy training are the same thing,” my critic wrote, with all the passionate intensity of someone who spends a lot of time on social media but not a whole lot else. While…
This is not the first e-mail I’ve had from soldiers in a war zone, but it is the first that I was told I was free to publish. I enjoy reading military biographies, history, and war stories, so I’ve been keen to publish one of these for a while. The…
The picture above is of a former client Katsunobu, winning his masters class (50+) bodybuilding competition. It is possible that this means even more to me than it does to him. For me it represents the culmination of three years of effort. Katsu is the first real bodybuilder to take our Japanese site…
I’m trying to figure out a compromise where I can still share photos & testimonials, but save you the hassle of the results page load times (and me the headache of editing that huge lot of html). I think we’re nearly there, but in the meantime, here are three recent client results that…
If you are anything like me, the first time after doing your initial calculations to get your calorie/macro requirements you ran a bit of math to try to predict rates of fat-loss and started getting a little excited. Unfortunately the math doesn’t ever work out as neatly as planned, which…
For the Japanese, new year is like Christmas – people gather with family and, of course, there are special foods eaten. Those green things in the image below are mochi, soft, gooey rice sweets, about the size of a large soup spoon, and every year a handful of people choke to death…
Though it is very hard to identify and accept for yourself, there are some cases where it is necessary to take one step backwards before you can take two steps forward. Two common situations where this is true: 1. A guy that wants abs but doesn’t have enough lean mass…
It is the practical experience of working with clients that allows me to write the guides on the site. However, in trying to keep them science based but immediately applicable to most people in most situations, I miss out on covering some fascinating individual learning points from working with people.…
The above photo was taken in Osaka, two weeks after a photo shoot Rog hired me to help him prepare for. I first met Rog at an industry conference in the US last summer. It was good to meet people in the industry outside of Japan and confirm that, contrary to my…
In the article What is the Value of an Online Diet Coach? I talked about the specific benefits I think working with an online coach holds vs one you can hire locally. This article focuses more on the specifics of what I personally do and my thoughts on what I feel…
Most personal trainers you’ll meet at your local gym want you as a customer for life. I don’t. I think that is a shitty business model. – Keep you confused, never explain things fully, always make it seem difficult so that you feel that you need them and keep coming…
In most gyms you go to nowadays you will find a few of the membership take steroids. It’s a fact of life. Though sometimes it’s obvious, rarely will anyone admit using them so you end up guessing who is on them. The unfortunate side of this is that many members…
Though Phil did shed some fat, this isn’t really about that. An experienced amateur bodybuilder, he wanted to share his experiences when he switched to IF/LG principles. Phil, as a man that has had great success using the 5-6 meals/day, high-volume training approach, can you tell us why you decided…
Just to keep in periodic touch with you, I am still going strong on IF. It’s been since November now, and I thought I would share some more progress pics. I am currently 179 lbs which is approximately 10 lbs less than when I finished my initial cut. I am…
What follows is a list of the most common things I’ve observed when working with clients. Some I cannot explain and won’t try, others I could, but there are better articles out there with explanations, so I’ve given links for further reading if one particular topic interests/concerns you.
When Scott first came to me I was confused. He was bigger and stronger, yet wanted my help. I knew that if I could get Scott’s program right, by helping out someone of their size I’d have a chance to impress upon some of my bodybuilder friends here in Japan the…
When I saw the incredible photos of Jesse’s transformation a few weeks ago it totally blew me away. I wanted to give him a platform to share his experience so I interviewed him to find out how he did it. Little did I realize how much this man’s story would surprise…
