Daily Training Log: Fill & Download for Free

The difference between a great personal trainer and a terrible one is massive.A terrible trainer won’t know their ass from their elbow-so don’t expect them to know which exercises will get your towards the body of your dreams.Talk to them about training and they’ll try to tell trifling tips or tiny trivia…terrible!Some just don’t have any depth of knowledge-it’s the difference between talking about chemistry with someone halfway through a high school class, versus someone with a PhD in the subject.Yes, the high schooler can name some molecules and maybe nod their way through a conversation. Perhaps they can fool someone with ZERO chemistry knowledge into thinking they’re an expert, and buy their chemistry training manual!Just 4 easy payments of 39.99!But, they don’t really have an understanding on the subject that’s on the same plane of existence as the person devoting their life to it.The ones who burned their eyes staring at a screen learning for years upon years.I’ll see this on Instagram all the time-the ones who have studied things will have well written posts-researched and thought out, logically and methodically put together.Others will have….abs.Beautiful, well-proportioned, etched in cedarwood, sculpted-by-Michel-motherf*cking-angelo himself abs that would make Hercules jealous, but still just abs!How are his plans gonna be more effective because HE got blessed with magnificent genetics for leanness and muscle insertions, along with a hefty dose of vitamin S?(Hint: they’re not)I’ve seen some shocking things here in China, where the level of knowledge of personal training is hilariously low. Most gyms are…5 years old. It’s just becoming a thing.The poor smith machine at my gym has been abused so many times that it should file a harassment suit. I’ve seen…what I cannot unsee.Power cleans in a smith machine.Front raises in a smith machine.My personal favorite-three skinny trainers, all in high school, probably weighing 400lbs between the three of them, doing drop sets on curls with 5kg per side in the smith machine.For. Half. An. Hour. Straight.There are a lot of bad trainers out there, and if you don’t know much about training…it’s hard to tell which are terrible!My thoughts on personal trainers are the same as any people. You get good and bad ones, and you have to find out which they are for yourself.A truly great trainer will possess astounding empathy. They’ll listen not just to your every word, but tune in to your tone of voice and body language. Communication is key, they’ll actually make an effort to fully understand not just your workout, or your goals, but you, as a person.They’ll care. They’ll care just as much about your training as their own. When they are with you, they’re with YOU. Not thinking about something else. Not talking to other people. Not on their phone.They’re with you.Technical knowledge is also important. A coach can either be well-read or well-experienced.Preferably, they’ll be both.There are things from books that you cannot learn from training. Spending countless hours trawling forums, message boards, anatomy books, Youtube, websites, training logs, magazines and interviews has given me countless gems of training knowledge that I just never would have dug up on my own.There are things from experience training yourself and others that you absolutely cannot get from books. About four months ago, a bit before I started writing on Quora, I decided to pursue training others full time.After some contemplation, I settled that the best way to put my knowledge into action was…training people. In order to do it as quickly as possible and get as many clients as I could, so I could train a broad range of people, I decided to do something a tad unconventional.In decided to do it for free.So, I wrote training and diet plans for anyone and everyone that wanted them. They filled out a questionnaire, sent it back via Wechat (the Chinese messaging super-app), and I wrote up a fully customized diet and training plan, every letter typed out, no copy paste bullshit, often 2–3 pages of specific recommendations.Then people referred their friends. I wrote them plans, too. They then recommended more friends.I created a training plan pyramid scheme.How did I monetize all these dozens of hours of writing plans and talking to clients?I didn’t.The knowledge and experience from training almost 100 clients this way has been invaluable. I’ve learned so much about how different people respond to different training plans. I’ve learned that people aren’t perfect, and they cheat on their diets.Sometimes, they even tell you when they do!I’ve learned most people need deloads-or at least changes in their program every few weeks. Not all, though. Some people respond well to fasting; others abhor it and do really badly. Some do well on keto; others need some carbs.But they’ve all done fantastically.12kg in 6 weeks.10kg in 2 months while gaining strength.The most recent-he used to be over 130kg/286lbs, by the way.First picture two months ago at 99kg/218lbs, second yesterday around 88kg/193lbs.His jawline looks like it should require a license, now.He looks like a different person. He is a different person.I told them all, up front:I don’t have any experience training clients. None.I don’t have any certifications, certificates, credentials, company, contracts or citations.All I have are my knowledge and my passion for helping people.You’re my guinea pigs.But, you won’t need credit cards, cash, currency, coins, checks or any capital conceivable.You’ll pay me in sweat.Follow me on Instagram for daily diet and training tips!

Here is a list of the more common things to avoid/doDon’t waste your time focusing on isolation exercises. That can come later.Do focus on compound lifts like the bench press, squat, and deadlift.Don’t try any exercise without receiving proper training. Seriously. You will get injured extremely quick and the effects could be debilitating.Do ensure you are staying hydrated throughout.Don’t lift without a spotter(s)Do keep some form of training log (my personal favorite is the Strong app)Don’t waste your time doing things that will not help you (e.g. flexing in the mirror every 5 minutes thinking some muscle is going to just pop out, taking dozens of pictures of yourselves, playing on your phone the whole time)Do ensure your diet consists of protein, carbs, and fats at each meal. Ensure you are consuming adequate calories daily.If it hurts, stop immediately. Make sure you know the difference between pain and just being sore.Working out for hours doesn’t mean you will that much stronger. Your body needs rest to grow. Don’t overdo it.You. Do. Not. Need. Supplements. The only exceptions I would make to that is creatine. Even then, you absolutely do not need it.Careful of the broscience. You’ll hear a bunch of different things from a bunch of different people. Most of it will be crap.The list can go on, but this should be way more than enough to get you on the right track.

Wow… Lot’s and lot’s of misinformation on here…Let me say that I was a Special Forces soldier and I went through the training in the 80’s.Most of what has been said in this thread is WRONG. I don’t think it is intentional, but I also think people speculate who haven’t “been there, done that”. More so, many people are reading their own interpretation into the word “rival”, thus basing answers on that interpretation.Rival can have many meanings. Superiority? Head to head combat? What?In this case, there is neither a “yes” or “no” quick answer. The reality is that what a professional athlete requires in terms of fitness is absolutely different than what a Special Forces soldier requires in fitness. I have seen professional athletes be put into Special Forces scenarios and fail on the fitness front. Equally so, I have watched spec ops guys who are daily humping heavy arsed rucksacks, doing 100’s of push-ups and running dozens of miles break down doing “aerobics” or yoga with a professional aerobics or yoga instructor.Apples and elephants. Not even similar in any way.A professional athlete is a “pro” because they combine stellar positional skills, with unique athleticism and program oriented fitness. For instance, an NFL lineman is massive, is massively strong and is able to exert overwhelming force for brief periods… over and over.Take that same NFL lineman and have him hump a 150 lb rucksack in the mountains for 20+ days on limited water and caloric intake…I bet he would become a cry-baby.Consider a pro soccer player… They have massive endurance and burst speed fitness. Now, take that soccer player and ask them to put a log over their head and run with it or, even better, run full speed into a door and take it off the hinges. I bet the log would break him and he would bounce off of the door like a rubber ball.A professional athlete has focused fitness - focused for their position and sport.A Special Forces soldier has a wide diversity of fitness across a range of athleticism.There is the difference and that is why the question is completely flawed.The Special Forces solider trains for a wide variety and margin of scenarios under diverse environmental and health conditions. We train our body to go beyond its limits when it is under duress. We train in endurance, speed, strength, quickness, agility… And will get asked to perform all of these on any given day in ways we would never have imagined. Sometimes in bizarre ways, such as having to do a hand-over-hand free climb up an icy face with nothing but 550 cord as the rope.Let me summarize this with a true scenario… My SF class started with somewhere close to 700 guys. I remember as a skinny, above average, athletic, but nothing special guy looking at 700 guys who mostly fell into 2 groups. On one side were the “gazelles” who could run all day and never break a sweat. On the other side were the NFL linebackers who squat 1000 lbs, bench 500, etc. I was in the middle of the pack when the first PT test was done. The gazelles had run sub 5 minute miles and the linebackers had done 10,000 push-ups/sit-ups.At the end of the Q course, as I looked around at the less than 60 who made it through, all of them looked like me… they weren’t the gazelles nor the linebackers. They were the guys who balanced both and could push either farther than the other 640 guys who didn’t make it.That is the unique athleticism of the Special Forces soldier… Jack of All fitness.