I love working out in December. The January newbies are long gone. Even the novices who work out with the gym’s trainers have mostly given up. It’s easy to get to the equipment I need, and to find space to use it. There’s an easy camaraderie among those of us who lift 52 weeks a year. Even if we don’t know each other by name, we know the woman to the left won’t try to step over the bar we’re about to lift off the floor, and the guy to the right won’t bump into the arm that’s pressing a 70-pound dumbbell.

But it’s January now, and January is different. January is when you see people you’ve never seen in your gym before, some of whom are there for the first time. Most of…

Tags: Tags: advice, fitness, gym etiquette, January, newbies, training

I spent last weekend at the Perform Better Summit in Providence, Rhode Island, where I was exposed to more information than I could possibly absorb. There was all the great stuff I expected from Stu McGill, Thomas Myers, and Gray Cook. My coauthor, Alwyn Cosgrove, spoke about fat loss in what I thought was the best presentation of the weekend. (And that’s really saying something.)

I missed a bunch of speakers whose talks would’ve been at the top of my list at any other conference: Dan John, Mark Verstegen, Charles Staley, Chris Mohr, Mike Boyle.

Even with all that talent and experience on the lineup, I thought the most provocative presentation came from Thom Plummer, who spoke about the future of the fitness industry. As I told a couple of friends afterwards, almost…

Tags: Tags: alwyn cosgrove, bodybuilding, cardio, chris bathke, fitness industry, nrol for abs, publishing, strength, thomas plummer, training

Take a quick look at that picture, and guess which one is me. Make a mental note of which one you guessed.

If you look closely, you’ll notice that two of the people in the picture, my sisters, are obviously female. Although it’s not completely obvious, the other five – my four brothers and me – are male. So that narrows it down.

The fashion historians in the audience will probably figure out from the long, center-parted hair and wide lapels that this was shot sometime in the mid to late ’70s. The math majors will note that a guy who was born in 1957 (says it right there on my Wikipedia page) would’ve been in his late teens or early twenties.

This information narrows your choices considerably.

When I…

Tags: Tags: age, aging, embarrassing old photos, exercise, lifeguarding, strength training, training, vanity

Today, George Washington is a marble bust. Historians typically rank him as our second-greatest president, after Lincoln. But for most Americans Denzel is the first Washington who comes to mind if we’re talking about a person, vs. a city or symbol.

(Fun fact: Washington is the blackest presidential surname, even blacker than Black, which is 68% white. Meanwhile, there’s a 19% chance that a person named White is in fact African-American.)

If we conjure up an image of George Washington as a fully fleshed-out human, it’s probably one of those portraits that shows him with narrow shoulders, a spreading midsection, and womanly hips.

The actual Washington didn’t look anything like that. Here’s how a fellow military officer described the 26-year-old future hero:

“[S]traight as an Indian, measuring six feet two inches in his stockings, and weighing…

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Tags: Tags: fitness, george washington, sports, training, u.s. presidents

You need a sense of humor to promote yourself. It especially comes in handy when you realize that you’re telling people to do the opposite of what you’re currently doing.

For three weeks, I’ve done everything I can to promote the new book, and I’ve done almost nothing else. I took the day off on Christmas, and I knocked off a little early on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. But that was it, until yesterday.

My normal schedule is simple and sustainable: I get up early in the morning, I knock off for an hour or two at midday to work out or run errands, and then I shut off the computer at 6 p.m.

My promote-a-new-book schedule is insane. I get up early, and spend the next 12 to 14 hours doing radio interviews, answering…

Tags: Tags: exercise, nrol for abs, self-promotion, tragedy, training

One of the best parts of my job as a writer is reading my email. I never know what I’m going to find. Along with all the exciting offers to spend money I don’t have on things I don’t need — which, granted, is the majority of my email on any given day — are some genuinely surprising, occasionally moving, and completely unsolicited stories from readers.

Case in point: On December 28, two days before my new book came out, I got an email from Leslie Spencer, a professor in the department of health and exercise science at Rowan University in New Jersey. Her message hit the trifecta: surprising, moving, and 100 percent unsolicited.

Leslie was diagnosed with two different breast cancers in March 2009, both virulent and fully weaponized. Over the next 18 months she had a double mastectomy, full reconstruction, chemo, and radiation….

Tags: Tags: alwyn cosgrove, bodybuilding, cancer, competition, leslie spencer, new rules of lifting, training

The first thing I learned about book promotion: It helps to read your own book. Publishing is a long process, and it’s been months since my final pre-publication review of the pages. I stumbled over a couple of basic facts about NROL for Abs in my first few interviews.

The other thing I haven’t done in a while: the actual workouts. I finished the program in March, and since then I’ve been doing all kinds of workouts that included bits and pieces of Alwyn’s program. But I haven’t done the full Cosgrove in nine months.

Yesterday, after spending time over the weekend answering questions about the workouts on the NROL for Abs forum, I decided to go through the program again, starting with Phase 1, Workout A.

Let me tell you …

Well, if you’ve done Alwyn’s workouts, you know. This is the difference between…

Tags: Tags: alwyn cosgrove, core, exercise, nate green, nrol for abs, training

Continuing with my interview with my coauthor, Alwyn Cosgrove:

In Part One, we covered the reasons we wrote NROL for Abs, and you explained your core-training philosophy and methodology. But core training is maybe one-fifth of the program in our book.

Let’s start with mobility, since that’s the way readers will start all the workouts. Pretend I’m a reader who picks up this book with the goal of finding a bunch of exercises that’ll help me get ripped abs. How do you convince me that the mobility exercises are just as important as the core training? What do I lose if I don’t work on mobility?

AC: Take a look at most 70-year-olds and get back to me! That should be reason enough.

Let me illustrate this with a story. When I got out of the hospital in 2006 I was struggling to regain fitness. As…

Tags: Tags: alwyn cosgrove, core training, nrol, nrol for abs, training, Weight Loss

Today is Opening Day for my new book with Alwyn Cosgrove, The New Rules of Lifting for Abs. I’m not sure if it’s in every bookstore yet, and Amazon still lists it as available for pre-order (the official release date is December 30, while I’m writing this on the 29th). But Amazon is telling those who pre-ordered that their copies are on the way, and friends and colleagues who received advance copies are posting their reviews, so it feels close enough to the real thing.

Among the generous and enthusiastic endorsements for the new book:

* Craig Ballantyne lists his three favorite exercises from Alwyn’s programs.

* BJ Gaddour of Workout Muse gives the book a thumbs-up. (Also check out BJ’s interview with Alwyn.)

* One of the most pleasant surprises came from
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Tags: Tags: alwyn cosgrove, bj gaddour, craig ballantyne, exercise, nrol, nrol for abs, training, Weight Loss

Tony Gentilcore has a terrific new article at T-nation, featuring five exercises you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. I can’t wait to try them, and experience that magnificent sense of total inadequacy you can only get when you do stuff that’s a lot harder than what you’re currently doing.

But here’s a hypothetical problem: Let’s say I’m currently in the middle of a serious, goal-oriented training program. If I do those exercises the next time I’m in the gym, I’ll have to deviate from that program. At that point, I’m no longer “training.” I’m just working out. And Tony frowns on that:

Whenever I happen to train at a commercial gym, one of the biggest mistakes that I see guys making is the fact that they’re not training, they’re working out. Most (not all) tend to just flounder around, do a few sets of this, a couple of…

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Tags: Tags: new exercises, strength, t-nation, tony gentilcore, training, working out