This past week was interesting for me in so many ways that I almost don’t know where to start. Let’s start with the value and impact of the words we use:

Written: I write a lot of things throughout the week. I sit down and write out directions to athletes for workouts, I communicate on the EnduranceBaseCamp forums, I post status updates on Facebook, I send multiple tweets everyday, I send a few hundred emails, I send a few hundred texts messages and I often write things that end up in a blog post.

The point that I’m trying to make by listing all of those mediums is that I put out a lot of myself in writing each week. The one place that I no longer write is in my personal journals. This means that the majority of my own self discovery done through writing (which is my preferred method) is now done in an open forum.

What I have found interesting over the past couple weeks is that these words actually make it into the conciousness of some people. A few quick examples:

1. I was sitting at Panera Bread Friday evening with a guy that is looking towards a half iron distance triathlon. We were talking about his summer plans and what amount of fitness and skills would be necessary to participate in this type of endurance event, when a guy and his daughter came by our table. I personally didn’t recognize the gentleman (nor his daughter) but he came by and said, “I enjoy reading your blog.”

It kind of caught me off guard, so my response was a pretty quick “thanks”. After trying to think of a time in my past where I met the gentlemen I realized that he must have just come across the blog. It’s too bad I wasn’t quicker in my response because it would have been interesting to see where / when / who and what about this blog resonates with this guy. Maybe next time?

2. Twitter. Two weeks after a less-than-thoughtful tweet I received an email from a guy that Nikki and I know responding to that specific tweet. Yikes. I put so little thought into those messages. It might be scary to start piecing together patterns of thought and see how my impromptu mind works. (This response has actually turned into a good exchange of emails and phone call about things important to me.)

3. Race Reports. On Sunday I met a friend at the grocery store that mentioned he read my TTT race report. Not surprising really, but I have not seen this friend in months so it wouldn’t be surprising to also find out that he stopped checking in.

These are just a few ways I’ve seen the power of words displayed to me this week. None of these people came to me and said that their lives had completely changed or been turned around by my written thoughts, but each of them found it significant enough that they mentioned they had read something I wrote.

This was an important reminder that whether you are blogging, using a message board, micro-blogging or writing a note to your spouse, the messages you send have impact. Especially if the person receiving the message has given you some authority on a subject matter, such as some of my athletes and clients give to me in regards to wellness and performance.

Verbal: As much as I write, I talk even more. I hate talking on the phone, but I end up talking hours each day with clients. We talk about their eating habits, their sleep patterns, the latest news story, the weather and just about anything we need to talk about to keep motivation up during a training session so they can complete their tasks for the day.

As much as I enjoy writing, I find talking to be quite difficult to be effective. It probably has to do with structure? I try to have a beginning, middle and end to the things I write. While talking… it just falls out of my mouth. And while my verbal filter has become better over the years, it still lacks.

One example of how our choice of verbiage can create impact – is within my marriage. Nikki and I have been through the book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman. In that book we learned pretty clearly that I can best express my commitment to Nikki by sharing “words of affirmation”. Sounds like an easy task, but it can (and has) been a challenge at times. It is not challenging because I don’t want to express love to her, nor because she makes it hard to love her. It can prove to be challenging because speaking heartfelt and caring words is probably the most difficult form of communication for me to use. (Time, Gifts, Touch, and Acts of Service are the other four in case you were curious. I’m a “time” guy.)

This means that the words I use when talking to Nikki need to be well thought out and she needs to be positively affirmed often. The impact of the words I choose to use when communicating with her create either harmony or disharmony in our lives, marriage and relationship. (And because we work together, run a business together, train together and race together… our harmony is the most important variable in each others lives.)

Consumption of words: I realize that we often don’t consider words to be something we “consume”, but the truth is that we choose everyday what we are going to fill ourselves up with.

Today was a perfect example for me: On my way to work I had the local news playing. The first story was of a local doctor that killed his wife. The story was that they had been fighting and he pushed her off their boat. In an attempt to scare her, he ended up running her over and killing her. The second news story was even more sad. A 22 month old baby had died by drinking drain cleaner that the parents had left on their table. They had drain cleaner on the table because they were making meth. As if the story wasn’t sad enough, the father was 19 and the mother was only 14 years old.

At that moment I realized I had to make a change and turned the radio off. Why the morning news always has to focus on the robberies, deaths and accidents is not understood by me (but I bet a Waffle House or gas station gets robbed tonight and it will be the first story at 6am.)

It is in these moments that we can choose to consume or not consume these stories. This is one reason why Nikki and I also decided to get rid of our cable in 2009. In 2008, I was letting the CNBC talking heads determine my perception of the future – and it wasn’t looking very bright.

As we get bombarded with messages, news stories, sale pitches, advertisments, magazines, books and blogs – remember that what we choose to read and consume will impact us in some way. So choose wisely in what you consume. This also means you need to be wise in who you decide to associate with because in many ways your are choosing to infer meaning from their words and opinions.

Words you speak to yourself: I’ve written about the value of speaking positive affirmations, so I’ll post a link to that post here: Talk yourself into a better triathlon performance.

Our self image can be driven by the words we use in our own internal conversations.

Emotional Recovery: so what does any of this have to do with performance, triathlon or running? Well a positive self image, confidence and positive self affirmations have a lot of impact on performance.

But I have found this past week interesting from an “emotional recovery” point-of-view also. By emotional recovery, I mean my ability to wade through these oceans of words, stories and imagery and remain emotionally stable.

The American Triple T is now 9 days gone. This past Saturday (6 days out) I finally felt physically able to do a workout that I would consider “normal”. While my body seems to be coming around, my ability to mentally and emotionally recover has proven to be somewhat slower. Here are a few clues and symptoms that I’ve seen that make me consider this:

1. My mind is still trying to gravitate to the negative when I work out. “Your not going fast enough”, “You’ve lost fitness.” “You shouldn’t be this tired”, etc.

2. My ability to be empathetic is fairly limited.

3. My care taking ability has run out. Nikki had her wisdom teeth taken out on Friday of last week, by yesterday (Monday) afternoon my ability to filter out “production and work” and fit in “care taker” was gone. (Have I mentioned that I have the most patient wife ever? This is something all triathletes need to consider before deciding to make Ironman a regular and passionate pursuit.)

4. My mental ability to remain focused is limited to 30 to 40 minutes at best. And why this post has taken 3 days to write.

Final Thoughts:
a. The words that you decide to write or speak mean something to someone, so make sure they mean something to you.

b. When you decide to listen, watch or read materials, be careful that they are leaving an impact upon you that you are willing to accept.

c. If you find yourself taking in discussions, stories or television that you don’t find beneficial: change the conversation, change the channel or leave the room.

d. When you have internal dialogue – be positive.

e. If you find the ability to effectively monitor your internal conversations to be difficult, examine your physical fatigue.

f. If you find the ability to show empathy and remain sympathetic difficult, examine your physical fatigue and be very cautious with who you interact with and how you interact with them.

All lessons that I’m trying to absorb this week myself.

The spring season is in full swing and as of this past Saturday (April 11th), the farmer’s market is open here in Lexington, Kentucky. This is really good news for Nikki and I as it is a sign that our participation in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program at Elmwood Stock Farm is just about ready to begin.

Spring is one of my favorite times of year because our bodies are anxious to get outdoors and experience something besides treadmills, bike trainers and 25 yard pools.  It is also a time when the harvests are just beginning to start taking place and the early season vegetables are going to be available to fuel those outdoor adventures.

I wrote about our CSA participation a couple years ago when we first signed up.  (CSA’s and Eating for Fitness)  Now that we are entering our third year of participation, I thought I would go back and review some general thoughts about what our participation has meant to our nutritional habits and the benefits this participation has on training for triathlon.

… the more things stay the same:

As the years change and as time moves on, it is interesting to see how the same questions and issues come up again and again.  The big nutritional question that I get asked often goes something like this, “What is the perfect mix of calories I should take in to fuel my training?”

The question may not specifically include the word “perfect”, but essentially that is what I’m being asked to answer.  The questioner is often someone that nails each workout, day-after-day, often thinking that they may not be training enough.  In this way, they want to take a very detailed kcal-by-kcal approach to their nutritional intake.

Once you start asking questions such as:

1.  How many servings of vegetables do you eat?
2.  Do you eat a variety of fruits, or are bananas your only fruit?
3.  What do you eat to get your protein?
4.  What is your dependence upon sports nutrition products and sugar, during the times you are not working out?

It often doesn’t take too much probing into the athlete’s everyday nutritional behaviors to realize that a strict account of dietary choices is not necessary; what they need is a commitment to the basic nutritional habits that support their health.

How the CSA and Farmer’s Market forces us to focus on the basics of healthy nutrition:

Benefit #1 - We get a variety of foods to eat that support our health, automatically. No choices, no decisions.  It’s like an automatic savings plan with your bank….

As a part of our participation in the CSA, we get a full basket of fresh vegetables each week.  I’ll be honest and say that during our first year of participation, we had many varieties of vegetables I had never tried or cooked.  These new and different varieties is part of the benefit of the CSA.  It forces us to use, cook, eat a whole new group of foods that I wouldn’t normally try if they were not handed to me in a basket each week.  I also know that if I was left to my own devices to buy our vegetables from the grocery store, I simply wouldn’t choose many of these items, if I chose any vegetables at all.

Benefit #2 - Our diets naturally gravitate to a healthy diet plan because we need to use the food the farm delivers to us.

Nikki and I are just two people.  And while we eat a lot of food during the summer to fuel our active lifestyle, we often find it difficult to work through the entire basket of food before getting our basket the next week.  This is a great benefit for the make up of our diets as a whole because we end up filling more of our total dietary intake with these fresh and mostly organicaly grown food (a few items are still not certified organic).

Final thoughts:

The advice that I give athletes all the time regarding their swimming, biking and running is this:  “Be consistent!”  As a coach, there is no workout I can put into an athlete’s schedule that will “magically” boost their fitness and performance if they don’t swim/bike/run regularly.

When it comes to training for endurance sports there are no shortcuts.  An athlete that is out there doing the work month-after-month and more realistically, year-after-year, is going to outperform the athlete that kills themselves for 6 weeks thinking they are doing every session necessary to be successful.

This same paradigm can be said about your dietary habits and behaviors as a triathlete.  Get the basics done, week-after-week, year-after-year and you’ll be in a better position than if you spend all your time looking for the best diet to follow for 8 weeks or sports nutrition supplement to start consuming 3 times a day.

So start making a behavioral change by making a commitment to attending the local farmer’s market.  Just the process of attending the market and sorting through the vendors and food options will begin to make you more aware about what you are eating.  If you enjoy the food and the market enough, maybe you can decide to join a local CSA program too?

If you are looking for a CSA program in your area, visit – Local Havest.  It’s a great place to start looking online.

There have been a few questions on my mind as I continue to work on establishing our personal training and coaching business.  The questions result from two philosophies that influence our industry:

1.  Economic Cost correlated to Personal Reward
2.  Behavioral Choices correlated to Economic Cost

As you can imagine, the current economic climate is starting to make some trainers wonder if their clients will begin to cut back on the amount of sessions per week they exercise in the studio.  I do not believe that we have seen that occur yet (at least not for Nikki and I), but the fear is still there.

Here in Lexington, Kentucky, I wonder if the same can be said for all the trainers that are joining the profession on a full-time basis.  The personal training climate has definitely been changing over the last 3 years.  When we made the decision to move back to Lexington (July ‘05), we knew that we wanted to start our own training business.  At the time there were a limited number of private training studios, a large population in need of exercise, fitness and health services and a robust demographic that could afford regular training sessions.  The only change that we have seen in that equation over the three years has been an implosion of trainers and training facilities.  In late 2006 through 2007, we saw a new studio start up about every-other-month, not including the influx of 24hour low-cost facilities that has happened.  I wonder if those new-to-market facilities and professionals are thriving?

Let me address the delimma I’ve see in Personal Training in regards to a clients economic decision:

In most personal training businesses there are two models of selling your service:

a.  You sell “packages” of training sessions to clients.  This could be a package of 6,8 or 20 sessions; often the package is discounted to some degree based on the number of sessions bought.

b.  You bill the client for their training session once they have completed the session.  This can be set up like a massage session where you collect immediately after the service, or you can bill a client on a monthly basis.

We personally use a model where we bill our current clients at the end of each month based upon the number of workouts they completed.  This model has worked out well for us.  It took me a little time to buy into the concept of this model when we began using it, but after working in this manner for almost three years and having used the other models in past situations, I believe that it is the best methodology for both the client and the trainer.

Despite our success with this model, there are some behavioral choice and economic disincintives by using either of these models.  Why?

1.  The client is often seeking a trainer for one of several reasons: education, expertise, support, accountability and motivation.  At first the cost of a session may be worth the education and expertise, but there comes a time when the client has to decide if they have more to learn – or have they learned all they can from the trainer and want to find other ways to motivate and hold themselves accountable?

This is where I believe we have made our business a success.  We offer value to the lives of our clients because of the quality of service we can offer them.  Ultimately, we’ve found a group of people that believe in us as their “guides along their health and wellness journey”.

2.  Even for those that have chosen us as their “guides” it still presents an economic delimma prior to each workout.  Is this workout worth the effort and $50 or can I skip tomorrow’s session and live with Gary’s speeches and diatribes (we do require 24 hour notice when possible).

As you can see our economic incentives are turned around, we are punishing our clients (economically) by charging them for the behavior that we are trying to implement into their lifestyle (exercise).  If you have ever read the book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, you know that economic choices (even small ones) can greatly influence behavior.

So here’s the delimma that we are faced with:

1.  The client needs to exercise in order to improve health, body composition, emotional well-being, strength, functional strength, rehabilitation, etc.

2.  The client would like to use a trainer with experience and expertise on the subject (and preferrably with a good personality too)

3.  The client often does not have the intrinsic motivation to perform the workouts on their own over a long period of time, in a consistent manner.

4.  Personal Trainers make a living by charging a person (client) for a workout that the client may not be highly motivated to take on in the first place.

Can this situation be reversed?

Not to long ago I read a post by Brad Feld that talked about anti-charities.  The idea behind an anti-charity is that you set a goal and set a dollar amount to contribute to a charity.  If you DO NOT meet your goal, the money goes to that charity.  Great – you may be thinking, I like to contribute to charities so I win both ways.  Wrong!  The idea is that you choose a charity that you are opposed to.  So, I could choose something like the University of Colorado Athletic Booster Fund.  As a born and bred Nebraskan that graduated from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln and lives for college football season, it would destroy me to write a check out to the University of Colorado.

So my incentive is now on two different levels:

1.  I want to make my goal (whatever that may be) so that I can improve my life and situation.

2.  I want to make my goal so that I don’t have to face the negative consequence of helping out the Buffalo’s.

Can this be applied to a personal training model?

I believe it can, but we have to remember all parties involved and the motivation that each one has.  Here are my initial thoughts:

a.  Set a goal with a client.  For this example, let’s say that this goal is to strength train in the studio 2x a week with the trainer.  That would be 8 sessions for the month @ $50 a session = $400.

b.  Because this amount of financial cost is normal for that amount of service, decide on an appropriate amount of money that would cause some level of economic “hardship”.  For this example I’ll use a 50% premium:

$400 x 50% = $200 (penalty) + $400 (cost of service) = $600 total amount for contract

c.  Determine an agreed upon amount of money to “refund” for each behavior you want to reward (strength train at the studio in this scenario).  For this example I’ll use $28 per workout:

$28 x 8 = $224 (potential reward)

So if the client accomplishes the goal of working out 8x during that month, they will have paid $376 for those 8 sessions.  That would have saved them $24 based upon normal rates, but would have saved them the $224 based upon the initial contract.

“But wait,” you are saying.  The trainer now has motivation to not encourage the client to come in and workout.  On paper that may appear to be the case, but in reality it doesn’t work that way.

For instance, in normal times I have a cancellation rate of approximately 20%.  (This week is Thanksgiving and I’m looking at 50% of my normal schedule).  So given a normal situation 0f 20%, I could expect at least 1 cancellation out of those 8 sessions.

7 x $50 = $350.  $350 is less than the $376 that the trainer would make if the client earned back all of their “incentives”

Final thoughts on Economic Incentives, Personal Training and Behavior:

These are just my initial thoughts on the subject, but they have been mulling around in my head quite a bit lately.  It seems strange that as trainers, our business model exists by charging people money to do something that they initially (or ultimately) don’t want to do unless they have some type of outside motivation:  doctor’s orders, social pressure, spouse’s pressure, etc.

For some clients, the appointment alone is enough motivation to initate and adopt the behavior of exercise.  But for some it is not.  This is at least one way that I have thought of to try and use basic economic principles of behavior to try and motivate both the client and the trainer.  It appears that both can come out ahead, because keep in mind – the behavior of exercise does have some value to the client or they would not be seeking a trainer in the first place!

Why not just ask for the money in a package deal up front?

This is one model that I mentioned above that may appear to address the issue.  The client pays for the package; therefore the economic cost is already felt and the trainer and client can just begin their work without worrying about the cost per session.

That may appear to be the case, but from a purely economic perspective once the check has been written the economic incentive to determine behavior is gone.  As a client the economic hardship has been felt at the onset therefore there is no incentive to attend the workouts 3 weeks down-the-line; as the trainer when you get the money upfront, why would you be economically motivated to have the client show up – you’ve been paid?

The Last Word:

These are economic principles we are talking about – because as I mentioned, there are other motivators that are present for both the client and trainer that are not purely economic:

client: health, wellness, social
trainer: profession, character, reputation

But with everyone thinking in economic terms these days, I thought it might be time for personal trainers and coaches to begin looking at their business models and asking, “Does this make economic sense?”

The subject of when to eat and how often to eat is a common question that we get as trainers and coaches. There is a lot of discussion in the media about this topic that often leads us to believe that there is a magical formula to meal timing as it contributes to weight loss or weight management. So what are the facts?

Bottomline: There is no way to lose weight if you don’t create a calorie deficit. The timing of those meals may be helpful, especially if you look at behaviors and food cravings.

A common theme that I see in many people’s behavior patterns is that they eat very little in the morning before they head off to work, they grab a smaller quick lunch (if time allows) and then they find themselves needlessly tired and hungry by early afternoon. This hunger craving might be alleviated by a trip to the vending machine for a quick “satisfying” treat (like snickers, right?), followed up that evening by a large dinner at a restaurant or home.

I have been through these cycles and patterns too. The two sabotaging behaviors in this scenario are:

1. Eating too little during the first half of the day.

2. Which leads us to choose poor foods during the afternoon and overeat at night.

A commonly heard meal timing theory is that you can’t eat after 9pm (or any other time you may have heard). The issue isn’t so much that you eat after a specific time of day, it is likely due to the fact that you are overeating to make up for what you feel you didn’t eat earlier that day.

Another issue with late night eating is related to the behaviors that are associated with those hours of eating. Eating at late hours can often be done while sitting around trying to relax from a hard day of work, family (and hopefully exercise). Again, this situation is the perfect setting to mindlessly eat foods that are not as healthy and to mindlessly consume too much of them.

In the most recent Issue of Fitness Matters, put out by the American Council on Exercise (ACE), they tackle the meal timing discussion. Their suggestions:

1. Let hunger be your guide (but don’t eat mindlessly)
2. Eat a healthy breakfast – with whole grains and fruit
3. Create a calorie deficit – through consuming fewer calories than expending (add exercise)

So should we be concerned about when we eat during the day, while trying to lose weight?

My answer would be yes and no.

Yes – Because it appears to be beneficial to consume high quality foods earlier in the day so that we don’t overconsume later in the afternoon and evening.

No – It is ok to eat foods later in the day, as long as that food is part of a normal meal plan and not the result of mindless consumption or binging episodes to manage emotions or boredom.

My Challenge to you:

1. Over the next 5 days commit to eating a breakfast with at least 1 piece of fruit.

2. During those 5 days keep a food log. Watch your own patterns and see if you find yourself eating food without even thinking about what you are eating.

Resources for more information:

Books:
1. Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think – a great book that discusses the topic of why we overeat

2. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto – my favorite book on nutrition lately. It just breaks down the subject into something as simple as “Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.” Simple, yet complex in execution.

Web Links:
1. Thoughtful Decision vs. Decisions Made Without Thought – a post I wrote in January of 2006 discussing my own struggles with becoming “aware” of what I feed myself and why.

2. Fit Day.com – a free website to help you journal your food intake.

3. Meal Timing – Zone Diet Webiste – interestingly, they suggest an 11:00pm pre-bed snack

4. Tri Fuel – Meal Timing, Composition, and Amount – article by Ellen Colemen, RD, MA, MPH, I’ve always enjoyed her stuff on nutrition for runners and triathletes

5. Men’s Health – Meal Timing Examples – just a sample of three scenario’s, not for everyone but gives an idea