If we’re being completely honest, stretching is about as much fun as visiting a drunk dentist in a third world country.

However, unlike visiting that dentist, it’s a necessary component for everyone trying to look, feel and perform their best in and out of the gym.

However, it’s often ignored and brushed off by many as something that’s just not important. Who has time to sit there and relax? You could be hitting supersets of bicep curls while balancing on a Bosu ball with one leg instead.

One thing you probably didn’t realize is that stretching, specifically anabolic stretching, can dramatically speed up muscle growth, strength, and recovery. In this article, I’m going to outline the main problem with “traditional” stretching and eight ways anabolic stretching can bring your body to the next level.

The BIG Problem With Traditional Stretching

The main problem with conventional stretching programs is that they often work against your body’s physiology rather than with it.

If you take a tight, cold muscle and expose it to prolonged “standard” stretching, you could incur scar tissue and micro-tearing, which could then lead to muscle weakness, inflexibility, and injury.

Furthermore, many professionals have prescribed stretching before exercise as a form of warm up. This is wrong.

A study published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research concluded that if you stretch before you lift weights, you could find yourself weaker and “off balanced” in your workouts. Not something we want when hoisting hundreds of pounds of metal.

Instead, the ideal time to stretch for overall health, performance and increasing muscle mass is right after your workout. At this point, the connective tissues are already being stretched from the blood volume in the muscles.

By manually stretching the muscles post workout, you get a double whammy effect; dramatically increasing the muscle fibers growth potential. And if you include some anabolic stretching, your results will 10x. Here are 8 More reasons to stretch:

1. It flips the muscle building switch to ON

Anabolic stretching activates mTOR. The more mTOR is activated, the greater protein synthesis will be.

2. It creates an occlusion effect. 

Anabolic stretching lasting 45+ seconds will create an oxygen deprived environment in the stretched muscle. As a result, lactate will build up initiating the release of super anabolic, IGF-1 inside the muscle. The more IGF-1 released, the more killer muscle you’ll build.

3. It increases IGF-1 sensitivity. 

More IGF-1 is not better if your body isn’t responding well to it. By following anabolic stretching protocols, you will increase the sensitivity of the IGF-1 receptors dramatically; making the anabolic response even greater.

4. It causes intramuscular hyperthermia

After you release the anabolic stretch, there will be a surge of blood flow into the muscles. This phenomenon is known as intramuscular hyperthermia. If your blood contains adequate nutrients via proper post, peri, and pre-workout nutrition, you’ll dramatically increase the facilitation of muscle recovery and growth.

5. It fatigues the muscles, stimulating more growth and power.

Since you’re using the muscles to perform the anabolic stretch, you’ll start to fatigue them from the intensity of the stretch. Fatiguing a muscle is a direct precursor to stimulating muscle growth.

6. Anabolic stretching transfers over to your workout. 

Flexibility does not equal mobility. Many strong athletes are rigid, and many flexible users are weak. With anabolic stretching, you’ll be building strength while becoming more flexible.

Furthermore, unlike standard stretching, you’ll not only improve the parallel elastic component (PEC) of the muscle, but also the series elastic components (SEC). AS improves dynamic mobility and are much more transferable to movement performance.

7. Anabolic stretching bulletproofs your muscles from tearing

Tears and pulls happen when a muscle is violently stretched. Following AS protocols will help prepare the muscle to deal with something like this, making it almost bulletproof to injury.

8. AS strengthens your tendons 

The majority of lifters hit a plateau and can’t get stronger because their tendons are weak. AS techniques strengthen tendons to overcome this problem.

Next Steps

Get it straight. The actual time commitment to doing these anabolic stretches is minimal – 5-10 minutes at most following a weight training session.

Grab some light weights and hold the stretch for 30-60s to unleash a flood of anabolic hormones. My favorite is the anabolic pec fly stretch.

It’s a surefire way to force the body to supercharge your muscle gaining potential, double recovery and see noticeable improvements in your muscle fullness and separation within the next 6-8 weeks.

Yeah, it’s still going hurt, but this time you’ll have a ton of extra head turning muscle to  show for it!

If you are ready for the next level and detailed plan to supercharge testosterone and muscle growth by 318%, pick up the Anabolic Stretching Program For Just $9 during its pre-release discount!

Research from the University of Georgia has shown that physical fitness and financial success are directly correlated with one another.

Regardless of this state, our world is more obese than ever. Why? Because fitness is one of the last remaining areas you can’t slide by with a half-assed effort.

It’s this one, simple fact, that makes fitness absolutely amazing.

In today’s hand out world, where everyone gets a ribbon for showing up, the art of earning success has been lost. Today we expect success, without doing any work.

Unfortunately that’s not reality.

Sure, in some cases you can steal, lie and cheat your way to success – that I can’t argue. However fitness isn’t one of those areas. You either put in the work or get put in your place. There’s a reason it’s called “working out”

You have to spend the hours sweating, training and earning your body. That’s what makes fitness amazing. It’s the antidote to our obese and success-entitled society. It’s a tribute to our most primal character trait: Work ethic.

It’s also a reminder that if you can change your body, you can change your life. Greg Plitt puts it best: “Second by second you lose the opportunity to become the person you want to be. Take charge of your life.”

It only takes a few hours a week of training and following basic nutrition guidelines to get there. Block out some time and make fitness a priority. You don’t want to be the richest man in the graveyard.

It’s a debate that’s raged since the first weight was lifted and (probably) won’t ever end until a meteor instantly wipes us from history.

It’s also a question I have been asked by almost every single client I have ever worked with.

And in today’s world where people are drowning in fitness information, but starving for results, the truth is often difficult to unmask. The question?

Should you train fasted or fed?

The answer I always give?

“It depends”

It depends on your goals. It depends on your training history and current diet. But most importantly, it depends on you, your life, and ultimately whats works for you; because training fasted (or fed) is just another tool in your arsenal. It’s not your entire arsenal.

Success comes from consistency. Not whether you have food in your stomach while doing drop sets in short shorts. That being said, its important to know whether this unique tool, is right for you.

Personally, I train fasted 85% of the time. I really do enjoy it and it works with my life.

Also my mom trained fasted while I was on the womb (then downed cheese biscuits post workout, obviously explaining my never ending quest for the perfect pizza) which makes me subconsciously feel like I have an obligation to follow in her footsteps.

That being said, many of my clients, friends and coaches, do not train fasted. They throw back a mammoth sized meal, then hit the gym hard. And they swear by its efficacy.

So with both sides religiously believing (and proving) they are correct, who are we to follow? Furthermore, which style is right for you, your life and your goals? In this article, the fasted vs fed training war comes to an end. But first, let’s start with the basics.

The magical properties of insulin 

Let’s first get clear what fasted training is. Obviously it’s training (with weights, cardio etc.) in a “fasted” state. A fasted state then, is when your insulin levels are low or at baseline, making fat the primary source of energy for your activities.

When we eat food, our bodies release insulin to manage the incoming nutrients into your blood stream. The bigger the meal, the bigger the insulin response and the longer it takes to return to baseline (fasted) levels.

Thus, the ideal fasted training time is in the morning before breakfast (since your last meal was usually 7+ hours ago). Yes, I am aware that waking up and getting to the gym can be a real pain in the ass for some. It’s usually dark, cold and you are leaving the safe warm wonderland known as your bed to play with pieces of cold steel.

So why even consider fasted training then?

Because it “accelerates” fat loss; primarily stubborn fat. Yes stubborn fat is a real thing.

In males it’s usually the lower belly and in girls it’s found the hips and thighs. The reason it’s stubborn is because those body parts receive less blood flow. This makes it less likely your body will pull from those fat stores to burn up as energy (they would rather pull from fat stores that have a lot of blood flow such as your arms, neck or upper body.)

Thankfully fasted training provides a unique hormonal response that combats that inconvenience.

But before we jump into that let’s make one thing clear: fasted training does not allow you to cheat the laws of thermodynamics. If you’re not a calorie deficit, no amount of fasted training is going to help you get leaner.

Melt fat like butter in a microwave

Research shows that exercising with your insulin levels at baseline levels, burns more fat than exercising when insulin levels are higher (1). This is because insulin blunts the breakdown of fat cells for energy (lipolysis) and fat oxidation (fat burning).

Furthermore when you train in a fasted state, your body releases catecholamines (adrenaline) which help you melt stubborn fat like butter in a microwave, give you energy and protect against muscle wasting.

Another great benefit is that in a fasted state, blood flow to the abdominal region ( and the hip/thigh area in females) is increased (ever get cold fingers or toes in the morning before breakfast? All that blood is pooling into core of your body.) The additional catecholamines in the blood stream (as a result of fasted training) combined with the blood flow, help burn that stubborn body fat.

It’s time to get sensitive  

Something that’s not often mentioned is insulin sensitivity. Basically, it tells us how efficiently your body uses insulin to deposit a set amount glucose. If you are insulin sensitive, your body requires little insulin to partition the nutrients.

If you are insulin resistant, you need lots of insulin to shuttle the same amount of glucose out of your bloodstream. The more resistant you become, the more likely you are to develop type II diabetes (yikes!).

Fasted training is superior to its counterpart, fed training, in making you more sensitive to an insulin response. This helps you manage your food intake better and making sure that food is used to build muscle, not fat (unfortunately, no studies prove it makes you more sensitive emotionally… yet.)

Furthermore, fasted training has been shown to enhance a variety of biomarkers including GLUT4, VO2 max and general body composition (2)(3).

Accelerated muscle breakdown

So even though I swear by fasted training and it seems that it is the clear cut winner right now, I cannot ignore the significant drawback that makes this training style a double edged sword. Fasted training accelerates the breakdown of muscle tissue and results in some strength loss initially (until you are adapted).

Not a phrase anyone trying to build bodacious bulging biceps, wants to hear.

Obviously accelerated muscle breakdown is a big no-no, because we go to the gym to build muscle, get healthy and look good naked. Less muscle is certainly not what we want after all our hard work. More muscle loss means poorer results and underachievement. Here fed training it the clear winner since it provides the nutrients to protect muscle from excessive catabolism during workouts.

However, if you insist on training fasted (as I do) preventing muscle excessive catabolism is simple. All it takes is proper supplementation.

You can use a BCAA drink before and during your fasted workout to reduce muscle breakdown (10-20g), however I prefer β-Hydroxy β-Methylbutyrate (HMB). This is because it is an extremely potent anti-catabolic agent (more so than its parent leucine, found in BCAA’s.) Furthermore HMB has no effect on insulin whatsoever (keeping you in a fasted state when ingested, and is very cheap! 2-3g is all that’s required if you go this route.

Wavering mental focus 

One more thing to note is that if you are not used to fasted training, you will be noticeably weaker in the beginning. Don’t worry, your muscles aren’t falling off your bones.

The culprit here is your carbohydrate stores. In a fasted state, you have less carbohydrate stores available, since your body has been using it for energy while you weren’t eating. However your body is extremely intelligent. Over time, usually a few weeks, your body will adapt, preserving glycogen stores overnight so you have more available when you hit the gym fasted. Your strength will return and life will be back to awesome!

That being said, no matter how adapted I am, I have always found that I am my absolute strongest when I have food in my belly. There simply is no substitute for it.

Your turn!

Your body is an amazing machine. If you think you can’t handle deadlifting, squatting and bicep curls, while standing with 1 leg on a Bosu ball, you are selling yourself short.

My goal with this article was to give you some clarity and hopefully end the debate on the age old question, should I train fasted or fed. If you are feeling a little drained trying to get yourself to train fasted, here are some action steps you can take to make this part of your day your hour of power:

1. Drink more than water! As long as it has zero or very few (10-20 cals) it probably won’t knock you out of your fast. Some of my favourites are green tea, black coffee, caffeine pills, certain pre workout powders and the supplement Forge by legion athletics. Other option include sugar free gum, diet pop and BCAA drinks (sugar free) and Athletic greens!
2. Try and eat post workout. You are already in an accelerated catabolic state from the fasted training. Your body is primed to receive nutrients and food! Use is to your advantage. Just don’t use it as an excuse to have an all you can eat fiesta.
3. Try working out first thing in the morning. If that doesn’t work, try eating a small meal, then training a few hours later.
4. If you cannot make it fit your schedule, you absolutely hate it, or have a tough time putting on weight, just don’t do it. While helpful, it isn’t necessary to achieve your fitness goals. Just don’t be afraid to at least give it a shot!

Remember, your body is much more adaptive than you think and you have much more freedom than many gurus claim. Muscle won’t fall off if you train fasted and you certainly wont become the Hulk if you choke down 2 bananas and some eggs before the gym. Remember, the early bird doesn’t necessarily have to eat the worm right away.

It’s no secret that all the greats, had a morning routine to fuel their success.

Alexander the great

Michael Jordan

Ernest Hemmingway

And now it’s your turn.

It has taken me 5 years to filter through all the shit out there and distill what are the absolute best habits to implement into your morning routine.

Here are the five:

1. Hydration

2. Movement

3. Goals

4. Your One Thing

5. Scheduling

Let’s breakdown each one so that you can have a miracle morning, every morning. 🙂

1. Hydration

The body is composed of 80% water. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, it’s important you get enough for optimal functioning?

You agree? Good, we’re on the same page.

Yes, call it H20, liquid life or Dasani, hydrating yourself is the #1 thing you can do for more energy, vitality and taking control early in the day.

Furthermore, it helps wake you up!

I promise after you chug 500ml of water, you won’t want to go back to sleep.

That being said, it’s even more imperative you chug it first thing in the morning?

Why?

Because you have touched any water for about 8 hours. Your body is in a state of dehydration and craves liquid life. Give it what it needs.

Your action step: Place a bottle of water somewhere near you so as soon as you wake up, you drink it. Make it the first thing you do, every morning. 

2. Movement

Here’s an interesting question I got asked a while ago…

Are you lying down because you are tired OR Are you tired because you are lying down?

So you feel tired, you lie down. And now you are more tired then ever?

Ever think it’s the habit of lying down that is influencing you to be tired?

From my experience, and that of my private clients, energy is a habit. You can cultivate and grow it so that you have abundant energy on demand.

When you wake up, you’ve been lying (somewhat) still, for the past 6-8 hours. It makes sense you are tired. Not because you haven’t slept well, but because you just haven’t moved.

Hence the second most important factor to a miracle morning, every morning: Movement.

It’s critical that within the first 5-10 min of waking up, you do some sort of movement. Whether its going for a quick walk, pushups, bodyweight squats or even a little morning fun with the beautiful (hopefully) human beside you, movement is imperative.

It will stimulate blood flow, get the heart going and get (and keep) you wide awake without any side effects.

Even if you don’t feel like it – do it. Within 2-3 minutes, you’ll wonder why you ever even considered starting your day with coffee.

Action Step: Pick a movement, whether its 20 pushups, 5 squats or a 5 min walk and commit to doing it every single morning, even if you don’t feel like it for 30 days.

3. Rehearse your Goals

Ah, the word of the century. It seems these things. called goals, draw the line between success and failure.

While that is true, to a certain point, it isn’t the whole story.

I’m sure you know of someone (maybe even yourself) who has set new years goals and then never touched them again.

That’s not what we want. Goals are helpful because:

1. They keep us on track and focused on where we want to go
2. They motivate us to do better, become more and improve our lives
3. They show us what we don’t want in life

Take a ship out at sea. Without a goal, the ocean will swallow the ship whole. But with a predetermined, rehearsed goal, the ship will course correct until it arrives at its end goal.

The key there is predetermined and rehearsed. When people set new years goals, they have 50% of the equation correct. But you need 100% to make it work.

This is why goal rehearsal is important to implement into your morning routine.

By setting aside 3 minutes to go over your goals, you allow yourself the opportunity to:

1. Get refocused on where you want to go
2. Course correct, if need be
3. Get inspired with what your life will be like once you achieve that goal

Action Steps: If you haven’t already, decide on one goal you want to achieve in the next 90 days. Write it out and frame it where you can easily see it every morning and every night before bed. 

4. Attack your One Thing

You have your goals.

Excellent.

Now it’s time to do the one thing most people don’t do…Take action.

It’s important to take action on your goal now, in the morning, every morning because life gets in the way. Furthermore willpower is strongest in the morning.

If you wait until later to take action on your number one goal, you might not. Things come up,  you are tired or you simply just don’t feel like it and you willpower reserve isn’t strong enough to combat it.

That’s why we block off time now to do it. If that means getting up earlier and going to be earlier so be it. You can sleep in (if you want) after you achieve your goal.

Action step: Block out 1 hour of time to attack your number one goal right now. If that’s getting in shape: block out time to meal prep or go to the gym. 

If thats building a business, do the one thing that will help you move a little bit closer. Everyday, it may see like you aren’t making progress. But over time, you will be miles ahead of anyone else trying to achieve the same thing. 

5. Script your day

The last ingredient I want to add to your list is scripting every second of your day.

Structure = Freedom

When you don’t have anything going on, you tend to take on unproductive tasks. Furthermore you allow, what I call time vampires, to suck away the time.

What’s a time vampire?

Anything unproductive that will fill a gap of time that is not scripted.

If everything is scripted, there is no room for the time vampires to come and attack you.

However, you must actually stick to the script.

Making a script and not following through is a waste. Furthermore its a disrespect to yourself. If people want some of your time and they aren’t scheduled in, then tell them you are busy.

Would you ever miss an appointment with a doctor about to tell you about your cancer screening results? NO.

And who is more important, you or your doctor?

You are the most important person in your life.

Why would you disrespect yourself and miss an appointment you made with yourself. People will learn to plan in advance and stop bothering you with minute crap.

Action step: Script every moment of your waking day. That means meals, showers, work and fun. 

What if I told you there was a way you’ll never have to market a day in your life and have a highly profitable and successful business.

Would you do it?

I bet, you won’t.

Today I’m going to share the strategy and show you how to do it while challenge your thinking.

Ready?

A few weeks ago, I decided to run an experiment. An experiment solely designed to increase the number of people who buy my courses or invest in a coaching program, to get their desired end results.

Yes I did something most “gurus” don’t.

Learning how to create, successful students.

(gasp)

Earlier this year I made it my #1 goal to help 10,000 people build the body of their dreams by Jan 1st, 2020. That’s just 3 years. And that’s a gigantic goal.

The main reason I settled on that goal is because I’m 1,000,000% convinced that with 10,000 people per year getting their health in check our world will drastically change for the better.

Better doctors, lawyers and school teachers.

Better solutions to problems like cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease.

Better solutions to big world problems like poverty, food shortages and clean water.

The way I see it, right now, some of our smartest minds, the people who were born to solve these problems, are stuck dealing with their health. Whether its trying to be in better shape, or battling binge eating or trying to eat right, so they are around long enough to see their grand children – all there attention is focused on one thing:

Their health.

And don’t get me wrong, I believe through and through, that your health is the crux of your life. Without it, you have nothing.

However, if we can have successful fitness students, ones that go though a program (completely) and get results, instead of spending 5-10 years on a weight gain and loss cycle, we can free up their mental prowess to attack and solve all of these big problems.

Also, it doesn’t hurt that health care costs will go down, people will be generally happier, everyone will have more fun (and probably more sex too) AND it’s good for business.

Like really good.

To reach that goal of 10,000 successful students, I am going to have to get a lot better at everything I do and my staff and I are going to have to stay maniacally focused on that one goal.

In order to help us stay focused, we filter every major decision we make through the Body Graph™.

This graph is, well, important.

Why the body graph™ is really, really, really important

The journey to becoming one of my hall of fame students, is broken down into three major milestones.

Milestone #1: Leaning down to 8-10% bodyfat while maintaining strength

Milestone #2: Bulking up to 15% bodyfat while getting significantly stronger

Milestone #3: Carving the diamond and getting back down to 8-10% bodyfat with substantially more muscle and strength

Those three milestones form the basis of my Body Graph™.

Most people start out on this graph in the lower left-hand corner.

Sometimes they are very overweight and out of shape. Other times not.

They have limited knowledge no basic idea how to go from bottom left to top right.

But they’re eager and ready to do something.

To become a hall of fame student, they have to go through 4 different phases.

Phase #1: Fit body dreamer: A whole lot of dreaming, but no clue what to do.

Phase #2: Have what it takes?: Not really sure they can actually do it

Phase #3: Might make it: It’s getting hard but I think I can do this.

Phase #4: Hall of Fame student: BOOM! DID IT!

Each phase has its own unique challenges and struggles.

But a successful student will navigate all 4.

Here is where it gets tricky though.

Most people who start this journey will not complete it.

They won’t reach the Hall of Fame.

Each phase has roadblocks and challenges that cause people to drop off and quit.

We call these the Cliff Moments.

For people Dreamer phase, those Cliff Moments look like…

1Deciding on the program they are going to use

2What supplements to take

3Should they be going to the gym everyday

4Eating Breakfast or not

5Should they being doing cardio

At any point, a person on their journey to the Hall of Fame could reach one of these items and experience a Cliff Moment. If they do they’ll almost always quit.

If they get stumped on picking out the program they’ll try out, then they’ll never move forward, they’ll never get to the getting stronger phase, then life will get in the way and shortly after they’ll quit.

Then they’ll never realize they have legit potential, they never run for president and we’re all left sitting here trying to decide between Trump and Clinton, all the while shaking our heads and wondering how on earth it got to this point.

I’ll tell you how…

The person who should have run experienced a Cliff moment, fell off and quit.

So…

How to Actually Create Successful Students

Alright, sorry for the long intro, but none of the rest of this would make sense if you didn’t first understand the lens through which we are running this business.

Our job, to create successful students, is to do a few things:

Goal #1: Figure out what the Hall of Fame looks like for our users.

Goal #2: Know the major milestones our users have to pass in order to reach the Success Line.

Goal #3: Identify the Cliff Moments for each milestone.

Goal #4: Keep those Cliff Moments from causing our peeps to quit by teaching people strategies to overcome them.

Let me break it down for you using my business as an example.

Goal 1 – My Hall of Fame Student would be someone who has achieved their ideal body!

Goal 2 – The major milestones they would have to pass include losing weight, gaining muscle and strength, losing fat while keeping the new muscle/strength.

Goal 3 – Within the first milestone, cliff moments include:

1. Deciding on the program they are going to use
2. What supplements to take
3. Should they be going to the gym everyday
4. Eating Breakfast or not
5. Should they being doing cardio

Goal 4 – Providing solutions in the form of free articles, ebooks, guides and coaching services.

Your Turn

Successful students are the single best point of optimization in your business.

Take a look at your star client. What ladder did you move him or her up to get them there? What steps were necessary. What traps did they have to overcome to become a successful student.

Break it all down. Now, have an answer to every single Cliff Moment. That way you make creating successful students, inevitable.

Create 1,000s of them and you’ll never have to market a day in your life.

The butterfly effect is a scientific theory.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re wrong.

This isn’t some washed up, fluffy theory, that has been chewed up and spit out by the fitness world. This isn’t “the secret.” And this certainly isn’t the magic key that will give you razor sharp abs overnight, bulging biceps in a week, or make that Instagram model fall madly in love with you with 3 little questions.

This is, however, a theory for living a successful and fulfilled life. It’s a theory that meteorologists and wall street financial analysts both utilize and respect, like a physicist respects gravity.

It’s a theory about how every. Single. Little action.

Matters.

But Why Butterflies?

The idea came to be recognized as the “butterfly effect” after Edward Lorenz – an American mathematician and meteorologist – suggested that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in South America, might ultimately cause a hurricane, across the world, in India.

It may take a very long time, but the connection is real.

Lorenz observed that runs of his weather model, with initial condition data that was rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner, would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data.

A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at that exact moment in space and time, the hurricane would most likely never have happened.

Our everyday lives, are an ongoing demonstration of this principle.

Every action you have taken, are taking right now, and will take in the future, influences your future. No matter how small or insignificant it may seem at the time.

Have You Actually Been Taught To Be Fat?

Throughout your childhood, did this saying ever come up:

“3 more bites and then you can have dessert!”

If you were like my parents, this was nightly occurrence. I mean how else were my parents going to get me to consume the mini, bland tasting, green tree-like forms of matter on my plate known as broccoli?

Those 3 bites of broccoli were not the problem. It was the dessert afterwards. It was the fact that my parents were teaching me (obviously by mistake) to ignore what true satiety feels like.

They were ingraining in me, that magically, there was always room for dessert…like my stomach had a separate storage place for it (which I am now convinced, after years of obscene chocolate binges, there is).

As I progressed through adolescence, I began to do this unconsciously; I would eat a meal, feeling full, then seemingly all of a sudden, I was hungry again.

There is a reason I clocked in at 239 pounds at 18.

Now as a fitness professional, I’ve had to relearn what true hunger is (I still love you, mom and dad), so all is well in the world. That being said, an argument could be made for this simple fact:

Had I not learned what true satiety is, would I still have consistently overeaten through adolescence? And thus, would I have ever become obese? And without the hardship of obesity, would I have ended up where I am today, writing to you, these glorious words, right now?

Lets take another approach; your high school gym class, running assessment.

The high school I went to, and all surrounding schools, had a running evaluation every year during gym class, to asses your physical fitness level.

Call it the cooper test, the beep test, or legal torture – It certainly was my second least favourite part of high school (I’ll tell you about the taco truck and the one-armed homeless dude another time).

Anyways, I had the 12 minute run aka the Cooper Test.

While it’s important to run, the point here is that these tests were brutal, and confirmed one simple fact within me:

Running, or rather strenuous exercise = pain, lot’s of it.

Thus as I progressed in my years, I always subconsciously avoided any sort of heavy cardiovascular activity, because I knew it was gonna suck. Big time.

Did The Butterfly Get You This Morning?

How did you start your day this morning? I can bet you did something similar to yesterday.

Morning routines are one of the most powerful success hacks you can install into your everyday life. This is because it is the butterfly effect in full, unadulterated action.

Have you ever had a morning where you woke up before your alarm clock went off and felt great? You got up early, made yourself a well deserved breakfast (unless you are practicing intermittent fasting of course, in which you would have had time to make a delicious lunch,) beat rush hour traffic, and even got to work before the boss?

Those days are awesome.

Have you also had mornings where you snooze your alarm only to realize you have 5 minutes to get to work, so you throw on some wrinkled clothes, brush one tooth (how do you choose?) and spill coffee on your neatly wrinkled shirt because you are in a rush?

I’ve had both, and my guess is you have too. I’d also like to place a bet and say this:

You and I would choose the first scenario, every time.

And while you could argue that maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t have hit snooze 17 times in a row, you could also argue that because you hit snooze once, your whole day was affected and went to shit.

A very small change in initial conditions, had created a significantly different outcome.

Everything Matters. Everything.

The point I am trying to tattoo to the inside of your skull, my young grasshopper, is this:

The little things absolutely matter.

The biggest pitfall for novice trainers is to be inconsistent. Skipping a workout here or there DOES matter. Cheating on your diet a little here or there DOES matter.

Skipping your supplement regimen DOES matter. Not meticulously tracking your macros when you are first starting out DOES matter. Not allowing your steak to marinate for the allotted amount of time DOES matter.

Getting stronger and changing your body requires you to string together a series of workouts over time. Remember that every workout, every bite of food, and every supplement you take or skip counts, and moves you closer or farther away from your goals.

The Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step… In The Right Direction

What you do every single day matters more than you think. It can influence who you become 10, 20bnd even 30 years down the road. That one bite of cake may lead to a weekend of binge eating, setting your fitness goals back weeks.

Missing that workout may leave you room to let yourself slide in the future, delaying your body goals by weeks.

So today, and every day moving forward, I challenge you to take control. Choose to skip the one extra piece of pie. Don’t hit the snooze button and instead get up and dominate your day. Kick ass in the gym instead of skipping that last set.

Because you never know what kind of storm, one tiny action, may cause in the future.