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Stronger Sundays

Dominate your fitness business with this weekly collection of strategies, tips, and tricks.
By trainers, for trainers.

03/29/2024

Quote of the week:

“Client: I just got a bunch of fresh fruit, but then I read a new article saying fruit makes you fat, so now I can’t eat it.

Me: Hold onto it, because I’m about to publish a new article in the Journal of Common Sense that says fruit doesn’t make you fat.”

                                                                                      - Ben Bruno (@benbruno1) on Twitter
Watch for this newsletter from the Personal Trainer Development Center each Sunday.

In this issue:

  1. Doing the hard things makes all the difference
  2. How to put those last 10 pounds in perspective
  3. This week on the Online Trainer Show
1. Doing the hard things makes all the difference – Jonathan Goodman (follow him on IG @jonathan_goodman101)

Every morning at 6 a.m., the alarm on my (sweet) Casio watch dings.

And every morning, my brain tries to convince me to stay in bed.  

“You’re tired,” it says. “You’ll be more productive if you sleep a little longer.”

If that doesn’t work, it tells me it won’t hurt to give myself a break this one time.

After a few minutes like this, my brain gives up, and I manage to get up, throw on the sweatpants I laid out the night before, and stumble downstairs to read for an hour or so before the rest of my family wakes up.

Every day at 11:45 a.m., the process repeats itself.

I look down at my workout clothes, which I’ve laid out on my desktop because it would be too easy to ignore them if I left them in my bag.

And my brain takes another run at me.

“Bro, you’re sore,” it says, sounding like a college roommate trying to get me to stop studying so we can go out for beers. “You need more rest.”

If that doesn’t work, it tries another angle: “Bro, you’re already jacked. And you’ve got a smokin’-hot wife. You can skip a workout.”

As you can guess, my brain doesn’t win this one either.

This private work, the work you do despite the litany of excuses your brain comes up with, is what gives you the life, the love, and the health you desire.

The equation isn’t complicated. As the saying goes, if you want to have what others don’t, you have to do what others won’t.

It’s that simple. And it’s that hard.

2. How to put those last 10 pounds in perspective – Roland Denzel

Roland is an author and skill-based weight-loss coach at EatMoveLive52.com.

"I still have 10 pounds to go,” my new client told me on a recent call.

She’d lost some weight a few years ago, she explained, and always felt like she’d fallen short.

I knew exactly what she meant. I lost more than 100 pounds in the early 2000s. And almost 20 years later, I still feel like I have 10 pounds to go.

If you've been overweight, you know exactly what I mean. The feeling never goes away.

Here’s how I deal with it:

Given the choice, which is more important: losing those last few pounds, or making sure the first 100 never come back?

One hundred pounds ago, I couldn't do a lot of things I wanted to do. I huffed and puffed just getting my daughter a glass of water.

I asked my client what she wanted to do after she lost the weight.

She mentioned things like playing with her grandchild, hiking without pain, feeling more confident.

It’s a typical list. Pretty close to what most people want from losing weight.

It’s also a list of things she can do now, with or without those last 10 pounds.

But none of them would be easy, and some might not even be possible, if she regained the weight she’d already lost.

I don’t want to discourage anyone from reaching their health and fitness goals. I just ask them to enjoy what they can do now, especially if they couldn’t do them before.
3. This Week on the Online Trainer Show
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Here’s what podcast cohosts Jonathan Goodman, Carolina Belmares, and Ren Jones talked about this week on the Online Trainer Show:

In Episode 43, The Danger of Comparing Yourself to Other Online Trainers, Jon hangs a lantern on one of the dumbest ways we torture ourselves:

Getting jealous of someone who’s not even doing something you care about, or would want to be involved in.

It’s not the actual work they do that triggers us, Jon adds. It’s the fact they’re being celebrated for it, while we’re left staring at our phone or inbox, wondering why nobody’s talking about us.

The best defense against irrational, ego-crushing comparisons is to think about it from the other party’s point of view. As Ren notes, our perception of a successful person is very different from the way they see themselves.

“Nobody ever ‘arrives,’” he says. When it looks like somebody “got” somewhere, keep in mind that, in their mind, they’re nowhere close to where they want to end up.

So how do you get past these insidious comparisons?

Remind yourself of what you don’t know. You don’t know their starting point, their goals, their business structure, or their profit margins.

What looks like success from the outside might feel like an endless struggle to someone who knows better.

Among the consequences of jealousy are the ways we try to limit the psychic damage. That brings us to the subject of Episode 44, How to Stop Making Excuses and Grow Through Hardship.

Two things to get out of the way:

  • Not every excuse is invalid.
  • Not everything we make excuses for not doing is actually important or realistic.

As Jon says, “On any given day, there’s just too much.” Too many posts to read, too many people to connect with, too many projects to begin. “It’s this impossible problem.”

What matters are the things we can achieve, want to achieve, fail to achieve, and then find excuses for not achieving.

It’s easy to tell yourself you don’t have enough time (when you actually have plenty) or money (when the potential return on an expenditure is far beyond the cost) to do something you consider important.

Carolina offers a straightforward way to stop making excuses: “For me, change happens when this current situation is no longer tolerable.”

Even when your situation isn’t especially dire, ask yourself what you would do if you couldn’t live one more day without doing the thing you’ve been avoiding.

And then do what it takes to ensure you never reach that point.


You’ll find every episode here:

--> The Online Trainer Show
P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways we can help you:

1. Grab a free copy of The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Online Training
It’s your blueprint to building a fitness or nutrition business online. --> Click here

2. Join the Online Trainers Unite Group and connect with other online trainers  
It’s our Facebook community where fitness and nutrition pros like you can share insights and advice about starting or running a successful coaching business online.
--> Click here

3. Join the Online Trainer Academy
Our world-class certification course is everything you need to responsibly and profitably coach fitness or nutrition online. --> Click here


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