It’s a busy time of year for the health and fitness industry – many a new year’s resolution to be made and many people will start wokring out with a coach/trainer to help them on their way.

As a tongue-in-cheek approach to picking a coach, I’ve used the members of that 80′s Saturday afternoon classic the A-Team as a guide.

So what do you look for in a coach? And how the hell does it have anything to do with the A-Team?

If we look at our four main characters, we can draw some interesting parallels between the show and what will be happening in gyms around the world.

 

Coach Type 1: Faceman

Played by Dirk Benedict in the show.  The Faceman was a suave and charming character, who got by on good looks and being able to talk his way out of tight situations.

This type of coach will look the part – which is not a bad thing in itself, but will be mostly interested in themselves and spend a great deal of time looking in the mirror and/or chatting up other gym members.

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So here I am at the end of three great days of lectures, knowledge sharing and meeting great minds from around the globe.

For myself as much as anybody else, I wanted to go over some of the topics we covered and the three biggest tips I picked up from each speaker.

 

Michael Port – “Book yourself solid”

Michael has earnt a reputation as a marketing guru, especially for those within the fitness industry.

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Check out the newest video for Function Well, featuring yours truly:

 

It was a sad week last week when I learnt that one of my all time health and fitness heroes, Jack Lalanne, passed away at the ripe old age of 96.Even at that age most who knew him thought it was well before his time – I was pretty sure he could live to 200!

So why was Jack so special? Here’s some interesting facts:

• To date, he had the longest running TV health show ever – airing from 1959 to 1985 on ABC.
• 1956 Age 42: Set a world record of 1,033 pushups in 23 minutes on “You Asked for It” – a TV Show with Art Baker.
• 1984 Age 70!: Handcuffed, shackled and fighting strong winds and currents, towed 70 boats with 70 people from the Queen’s Way Bridge in the Long Beach Harbor to the Queen Mary, 1 ½ miles.
• Produced some classic fitness quotes, including: “Ten seconds on the lips and a lifetime on the hips.”, “Exercise is King, nutrition is Queen, put them together and you’ve got a kingdom”
• He had a superb way of giving it to you straight, in a highly inspirational and motivational way.

Here’s three of my very favourite Jack videos:

Unhappy People:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEboAJf9UVc
Stop Being So Tired: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBVk071N88M
Body and Mind Connection: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZelaI7k7FI

What better way to sign off, then with the words that Jack would sing at the end of each of his shows:

“It’s time to leave you.
Let’s say goodbye.
These precious moments just seem to fly.
Now here’s my wish for you.
May the good Lord bless
And keep you too.”

Goodbye Jack. We will all miss your inspiration, your character and your passion.

Arnold shares his thoughts and secrets on his path to success:

Four great articles by Charles Poliquin today on weight loss.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Happy Easter! I hope everybody enjoys their Easter eggs responsibly. That or you work hard to EARN them.

Today’s post is about Christian Thibaudeau, a strength coach who is slowly growing an almost cult like following.

Christian contributes regularly to t-nation, with often illuminating approaches to gaining strength and size.

What inspires me most is that Christian definately “walks the walk”, one look at him and you know he practices what he preaches.

I can recommend his books “High-Threshold muscle Building” and his now famous “The Little Black Book of Training Secrets”

For more info on Christian, visit his site at www.christianthibaudeau.com

Today’s inspiration comes from a true legend in the Strength and Conditioning world, Mr Charles Poliquin.

Charles has established a solid foundation for providing well researched and expert advice.

In his career as a coach so far he has coached Olympic medalists in 12 different sports!

I love reading articles for his unique blend of well researched fact and sometimes almost brutaly straight advice.

Charles shot into mainstream recognition with his contribrutions to t-nation and his extremely successful books, such as “The Poliquin Principles” and “Modern Trends in Strength Training”.

He also runs some of the most advanced training programmes for strength coaches and personal trainers in the world under his PICP certification programme.

To find out more about Charles and the certification programmes he runs, check out his site at www.charlespoliquin.com

Here is a clip of Charles discussing some of the fundamental issues related to long-term health:

Jamie Oliver is currently in America fighting the crusade against poor eating and obesity.

In much the same way as he did in the “Jamie’s School Dinners” series on Channel 4, he is visiting schools and communities and using the power of knowledge to help transform people’s lives.

So profound has his impact been, that the good people at TED have awarded him the TED 2010 prize for his work.

Here is the video from Jamie’s passionate lecture at TED:

“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.” – Jamie Oliver

Today’s post is about legendary Strength coach Joe DeFranco.

Joe is famed for his balls-to-the-wall training and for getting serious results with the athletes he works with.

Joe’s training philosophy is based around the maxim “No gimmicks, just hard work”

He has successfully combined elements of power-lifting training (West-side Barbell methods), traditional strength training, functional training, agility training, corrective exercise and athletic conditioning to produce complete programs to bring out the best in those he trains.

One of the key elements to every workout is the element of competition, which helps to drive his athletes to work consistently hard in the gym.

I will be using one of his programs as the basis for my next training block, with the aim of improving strength in the key movements of the bench press, pull-up and squat. So I am looking forward to some hard work, tough workouts and great results.

You can find out more about Joe at his website: www.defrancostraining.com and at his YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/joedefranco

In the meantime, here is a video of some of his work: