Fat Loss – Body Transformation – Advanced Nutrition

This time of year is a very busy time for my personal training studio, as many parents find just a little bit of extra free time with the kids going back to school. I can relate, my 5 year old started Kindergarten just last Monday!

The holidays will be here before you know it, however, there is still PLENTY of time to make a total body transformation while learning how to keep momentum through the holidays (wow, I can’t believe I’m already referencing the holidays, but don’t blink, they’ll be here soon enough). It’s now September 1 – how would you like to look and feel radically different when you visit family and friends at the end of November/December?

You can drastically change before the holidays are here!

Don’t put it off any longer. The first step is the hardest, but once you start moving, building momentum comes naturally and a new wardrobe for Christmas will seem like a phenomenal idea (and a very realistic goal).

Live stronger, live leaner, live better – the “best shape of your life” is not a thing of the past, it will be your holiday present! Get ready to work for it!!!

For our back to school personal training specials, contact me at 210.391.1454 or email me at boyd@the-personal-trainer.com for more information.

Boyd Myers
Personal Trainer in San Antonio
Owner, San Antonio’s Top Personal Training Studio
16613 Huebner Rd (corner of Huebner and Bitters)
210.391.1454

I have a reputation of telling it how it is when it comes to changing the body and losing weight. With that reputation has come the accompanying reputation of being “very hardcore” and I’ve had clients that have told me that initially, they were afraid to contact me.

While I could probably bring in many more clients if I posted about how they could drastically change everything about their lives without following a nutritional strategy and by exercising as little as 15 minutes per day, I’d kick my own ass if I ever typed anything like that. I am well aware that we are in an immediate gratification society. I know people are always looking for the quick fix and the easy way out.

You want a real fitness secret? Do you want the holy grail of fat loss? Here it is: be ready to absolutely work your ass off. Everything you do had better be based on the premise of hard work. There is no easy way, there’s no shortcut. If that is what you’re looking for, then you may want to exit now and keep wasting your time, money and effort on $20 hour personal trainers, worthless supplements and exercise gadgets and the next modern miracle of fat loss.

Once you grasp that making a drastic change takes hard work, then you’re light years ahead of most other people who think they are serious about making the change. It’s not impossible. Hell, after a few weeks you’ll be amazed at what intensity, discipline, effort and consistency can do. That’s why I hold every one of my clients accountable and push them harder than they have ever been pushed – not just for the sake of pushing them, but to help them get better.

This blog is here to educate. You can read the training and nutritional articles all day and have a very solid grasp on what it takes to change your body, lose fat and begin looking better immediately. I put even more effort in educating my clients and really getting specific in their programs as they get closer to goals or set new ones. As the body develops new strengths, it also develops new needs, and I take pride in the ability that I know how to help clients to make adjustments to continuously make progress.

I hear it day in and day out: “I love the way I look, I love the way I feel, and while it seemed like it was torture, it also seems like time flew by.” While they’re going through it? It’s hard damn work. But for some really odd reason, they actually begin to like it (eh Michelle, Ruth?)

Again: Discipline. Effort. Consistency. Intensity. Education. Accountability.

These 6 things are crucial to changing the body, and they’re the core of my personal training programs and are what I instill in each and every client. Unfortunately, the biggest mistake people make is that they don’t have these 6 things in check. They either lack the discipline to eat what they need to eat and stay consistent. They won’t put forth the necessary effort to be prepared. They don’t push themselves with intensity to force change, or they simply don’t know what to do (it’s not about simply moving around from station to station, everything has a purpose).

Progression does not “just” happen, it must be FORCED!

Boyd Myers
Personal Trainer in San Antonio
Owner, San Antonio’s Top Personal Training Studio
16613 Huebner Rd (corner of Huebner and Bitters)
210.391.1454

While much of the articles I write and posts that I make target those that have become sedentary and are thinking about losing weight and changing their bodies, there’s another demographic that comprises many of the people that contact me about my personal training services: those who have been exercising for years and feel as if they’re spinning their wheels, not making progress.

So many people believe that drastically changing the body and/or performing at a high level is just a case of exercising more and potentially eating less. Of course, the initial response to any exercise is the body’s adaptive abilities, so initially, everyone makes some amount of progress. Unfortunately, most people fell to understand that they must change things up and give the body a new stimulus to adapt to.

Others are following a program they saw work well for someone else, and can’t figure out why they aren’t making that same type of progress. They’re ignoring the Principle of Individual Differences (we’re all different) and just keep waiting for it to work.

There are many reasons why people exercise and put forth the effort, but become frustrated or discouraged when they aren’t seeing the fruits of their labor. It’s not easy – while working out does stimulate the body and is a great stress reliever, most people are ultimately after physical improvements that seem to be very evasive for most.

As a Master Fitness Trainer with over 14 years of personal training experience, I am an expert at identifying the limiting factors of most training programs. At no point do I feel overwhelmed by any task when it comes to training a specific client. I’m not the “average Joe” that simply took a certification and started calling myself a personal fitness trainer. I’ve trained individuals from all walks of life, from stay at home mothers to numerous professional athletes, dancers, models, actresses, and every type of “hard case” you can imagine – nobody is beyond assistance!

So many of my clients come in with extensive exercise experience, but still make progress like my clients that come in with absolutely no background in fitness or training. Even better, my regular modifications to every aspect of a client’s program allow my clients to keep making progress, and to help them shatter whatever glass ceilings they’ve imposed on themselves.

Don’t put forth the effort and fall into the mindset that you’re just not able to look a certain way. The only physical limits that we have are those created in our minds. Definition, defined muscles, and looking like someone who exercises and has discipline is reachable for absolutely anyone, no matter how far away that may seem to you right now.

If you’re content with exercising and not seeing results, then I’m not the personal trainer for you. But if you want to get out what you put in, feel free to contact me to discuss your situation.

Boyd Myers
Personal Trainer in San Antonio
Owner, San Antonio’s Top Personal Training Studio
16613 Huebner Rd (corner of Huebner and Bitters)
210.391.1454

One of my clients told me that this was one of their favorite writings on my blog, so I’ve decided to to

I could write about some of these things until my hands fall asleep. I could take over every news network in the world and rant about fitness myths and things people are doing incorrectly when it comes to attempting to change the body, and it’d go in one ear and out the other. Few people ever make drastic changes, yet most people think they know what they need to do.

A big part of my service is that I ask for people to give me full control, at least temporarily. I mean, if you’re coming to me for drastic changes and to become leaner and more defined than you have ever been, then it’s important that I eliminate as many x-factors as possible and help you reach those goals in as little time as possible.

I write a lot about fitness. I have numerous websites, I belong to numerous communities across the internet, and I am self-admittedly addicted to social media, like to search for people asking fitness questions and offer them my advice. Fat loss and body transformation are my passions. I’m obsessed with performance nutrition, training and the human body.

But I digress… No matter how much I type, how many questions I answer or how much effort I put into spreading fitness truth, there will always be that group that thinks their body is completely different than the other 6 billion bodies on earth and that they require some outstanding, miserable approach.

Here are a few of the misconceptions about changing the body that I wish would go away forever.

Cardio is not the best weapon against fast loss.
The best weapon against fat loss is increasing the resting metabolic rate. The best way to do that is to increase lean body mass. Unfortunately, this has a negative stigma from a large demographic, as they think it will lead to “big and bulky”. That’s absolutely false. Getting big and bulky is actually quite difficult (much more so than becoming lean and defined, actually).

Cardio alone leads to a reduction in lean body mass. So many people believe that the key is to burn more calories than they consume, so they reduce the amount they eat and start tearing the cardio up. This is not an effective way to determine which weight your losing (muscle versus fat). This leads to weight loss which will simply lead to a smaller version of what you are now, not a transformed version. Making yourself smaller does not mean that you have made the fat go away…

Running is not the best cardio exercise available.
Do you know how many people believe that running is the best fat loss tool? I’ve always said the best cardio is a type of cardio that you can do intensely, consistently, and stay injury free. Running leads to more overuse injuries (IT Band, Plantar Fasciitis, ligament, lower back, and the list goes on, and on, and on) than any other activity. Most people don’t listen to their bodies well enough to realize that it’s time to scale back training and choose a less impactive form of cardio. I’m all for doing something you love. But they key to long term progress is consistency. They key to consistency is staying healthy. If you like running and haven’t suffered any pain, than great, keep it up. But if you hate it, it hurts you and you don’t want to do it, there are many other effective alternatives.

Ab workouts do not change the appearance of the mid-section.
I have this conversation way more than I like. People routinely tell me that they are just doing abs at night to stay thin. How on earth does that even make sense? You train abs for functionality – not to change the way they look. They aren’t all of a sudden going to push fat aside or bust through them. If you want to see the muscle group, you must reduce fat.

Knowing what to do is not enough.
I am willing to write about absolutely any fitness related topic that someone asks me about. I routinely have question and answer sessions, tweet “Ask me any fitness, fat loss or training question” and browse the web communities looking to help individuals. I have absolutely no problem with sharing knowledge. The information is out there (as contradicting as most of it may be). But here’s the thing: it takes a little more than knowing. It takes a little more than willpower. What do I mean?

I am a compassionate person. But if you are having trouble getting started? I’ll call a spade a spade: I’ll tell you to get off of your ass and do it. How bad do you want it?

If your problem is emotional eating? Deal with it. Just stay away from the bad stuff. If you think that food tastes better than reaching your goals, then hell, eat all you want. I can guarantee you that no food has ever tasted that good.

Like going to happy hour? Getting to a certain level of conditioning is hard and requires sacrifice. Once you get there, you can loosen the reins, but if you aren’t there? How bad do you want to be there?

There are people that will tell you what you want to hear. I’d rather just tell you the truth.

Sometimes, the truth hurts.

I’m not losing weight and don’t get it. I’m eating tons of fruit.
Many fruits spike insulin. Insulin is the hormone that yells “STORE!” That’s pretty easy to understand. I’m not debating the mineral value of fruit. You DO need the vitamins. But it’s a cost benefit thing. If cigarettes had vitamin C would you ignore the other health risks to obtain it that way?

Same thing with wine. I am aware of the antioxidants. Alcohol makes you fat. Period. I don’t care if it’s wine, vodka and water, rum and diet, whatever. It makes you fat.

A male personal trainer doesn’t understand a female’s body.
This isn’t so much an article about personal training, but I was browsing fitness sites today and I read on a female personal trainer’s website that bolded statement above. I guess if the personal trainer has a month’s experience and their education is from reading bodybuilding magazines, than she may be correct. But that individual lost a ton of credibility with me by having that information on her site, as it is bogus. I take a great deal of pride understanding the different nutritional needs of a male and a female. I have spent hundreds of hours studying the contrasting hormonal effects of nutrition and training on males and females. I’m also well-known for helping females get ready for fitness and figure competitions, magazine shoots, auditions, weddings, and other drastic transformations. With that being said, I recognize that as nonsensical marketing, and while I’m thinking that someone will fall prey to it, it’s inaccurate. I totally understand that many people are more comfortable with a trainer of one gender or another, and that’s fine. But I know some great female personal trainers that are quite capable of training men and vice versa.

High reps do not tone your muscles.
“I DON’T WANT TO GET BIG!” Go check out my videos and see Julie dead lifting (just click on the “Videos” link on the side) 70 more pounds than her bodyweight for 1-2 reps. She has lost over 25lbs as she has prepared for her wedding, and not one time has she questioned my training techniques. All rep ranges are required, from 1 to 50 to, in some cases, 100. Intensity is key. You should not be looking as if you are moving your body through air while you are lifting. It should burn, you should be sweating and breathing hard.

Muscle has two states: it grows or it goes. Hypertrophy or atrophy. There is no state of toning or hardening.

At no point should you be starving.

Most people attempt to induce starvation to lose weight. This is the biggest mistake that one can possibly make, as it slams the metabolism shut. The body is a smart machine, and it can quickly determine when it is being starved – in defense, it will begin to preserve itself. Since fat is an infinitely denser source of calories than muscle, the body will sacrifice muscle and save fat. SO, the side effects from starvation are two-fold: an immediate halt in the metabolism and a reduction of lean body mass, slowing the metabolism long term. Besides, the starving, refugee look is not desirable.

The science behind changing the body is complex, but fortunately, you don’t have to be a biochemist or an endocrinologist to transform the way you look. With that being said, you cannot ignore some very simple things. For whatever reason, most people throw logic out the window and pay attention to the same, tired old myths that simply do not lead to progress. These traps may lead to a few pounds lost in the beginning, but they do not yield long term results.

Remember: if you do the same old thing, you’ll get the same old results. When something isn’t working, it won’t mysteriously start yielding results. Patience is one thing, but being naive is another. Discipline is paramount, but it also requires education.

Boyd Myers
Personal Trainer in San Antonio
Owner, San Antonio’s Top Personal Training Studio
16613 Huebner Rd (corner of Huebner and Bitters)
210.391.1454

Hey everyone,

Now that the blog has well over 1000 posts, I am going to add a “Most Popular” (or most important) articles on the sidebar to help people find important information. While I enjoy writing the rant posts and ripping bogus workout routines (especially P90X :) and other things, I’m going to keep the sidebar to the nutritional information that you can use to develop your diet strategy, my main training articles, supplement guidelines and the other information that will assist readers in their body transformations and fat loss endeavors.

If you’d like to suggest a past post to be listed, let me know. If there’s a topic you’d like to see me cover, I always take suggestions into consideration.

I hope everyone’s has a great Wednesday – maybe it will cool off here in San Antonio. As summer comes to an end, there’s never been a better time to embark on your own body transformation program. It’s not easy, but the success rate of my clients is extremely high – make the next success story yours!

Boyd Myers
Personal Trainer in San Antonio
Owner, San Antonio’s Top Personal Training Studio
16613 Huebner Rd (corner of Huebner and Bitters)
210.391.1454

Hey San Antonio and beyond,

It has been an absolutely crazy last few days for me but I wanted to get a blog in before I hit my workout with the insanity that I typically do ;). My little boy started Kindergarten yesterday, and while school is a huge rite of passage, it still was an emotional time for me. I love seeing the little boy he is transitioning from baby into, but the man he will become gives me a sense of accomplishment and pride like nothing else I have ever felt.

Referral is the main source of my business. My clients don’t hesitate to talk about what we’re doing and they’re usually asked “what on earth are you doing” and “how did you lose that weight?” I hear a lot of the same stories: “I was telling her what we do and she said that her personal trainer never pushes her or never changes the workouts up.” One of the first thing I tell my clients is that no two workouts will be the same – the body adapts and we must continuously change to force the body to keep adapting. The other thing that they hear right up front from me is that the only easy workout is the last workout. I don’t want you to dread anything: every day is a new day that is an opportunity to become better. But this isn’t for those who aren’t ready to change. People often say “I’d do anything to look a certain way” and I hold them to that.

My first job is to motivate you and to help push you to become better. Sometimes, we get a little run down, tired, or simply have a slight reduction in motivation – when this happens, it’s my job to guide clients to the spot of which they set their goals. If I have to pick them up and carry them, I embrace that.

Stop doing the same old thing. The same thing keeps getting the same results. You have to continuously take yourself to the next level to reach new heights.

The body is an amazing organism, and the mind is the engine that moves it – you are only restricted by yourself. Never hold back!

Boyd Myers
Personal Trainer in San Antonio
Owner, San Antonio’s Top Personal Training Studio
16613 Huebner Rd (corner of Huebner and Bitters)
210.391.1454

On the Personal Trainer in San Antonio Blog, I often say that radically transforming the body and maintaining fat loss progress is one of the single hardest things one can possibly do.

But let’s put things in perspective for a second.

When you’re a bit too tired to workout, or just don’t have the energy to get another set or to find the intensity, remember that you are ABLE to be there. Right now in Chile, there are 33 miners trapped in a collapsed mind. Today, after 17 days, it was discovered that they were alive and had made it to a “safety” seam (kind of like an apartment within the mine for emergencies). They are now in the process of being rescued and barring a catastrophe, they’ll be pulled out alive.

Seventeen days in a mine with no contact with the outside world would seem like an eternity. Now, while being rescued, they are getting supplies, water and fresh air. But 17 days is the tip of the iceberg: it will take over 4 months to get them out.

Think about the big picture. A little discipline and work ethic will go a long way, but you have to make it happen. So you’re tired, work too much, and have a lot going on at home – you aren’t trapped in a mine 3000 feet underground.

Do not look for excuses, they’re way too easy to find, and excuses don’t lead to progress.

Do the work! Obtain the results!

Boyd Myers
Personal Trainer in San Antonio
Owner, San Antonio’s Top Personal Training Studio
16613 Huebner Rd (corner of Huebner and Bitters)
210.391.1454

Hey everyone,

I hope everyone has had a great week. I’m writing more huge posts like the one I wrote the other day on rep ranges, so keep checking back!

This weekend will be busy for me – I have a late night of training tonight, morning clients tomorrow and on Sunday, I film my spot for the Springtime 65 show on Public Access here in San Antonio. I have a few ideas for topics but I’m open for suggestions. If there’s something you’d be interested in having me discuss, let me know and maybe I’ll use your topic on the show!

I’ve been absolutely murdering it in the gym myself over the last several weeks, and I’m taking some scheduled downtime after what was a brutal week of lifting. It’ll be tough to keep myself out, and may even go against my mind and do an extremely light day to keep the blood flowing tomorrow, although I know rest and recovery is exactly what I need as I’m about to begin a brutal microcyle of training next week to get to the next level of my program!

I hope everyone has a great weekend – as I finish my upcoming articles, I’ll post them here and link them off of Twitter and Facebook.

Remember, we are still running our Two For One Personal Training Special, so if you would like to get in shape with a friend, co-worker or family member, this is the perfect opportunity. Training goals and condition differences do not matter, as my personal trainers and I are extremely comfortable of training individuals simultaneously with contrasting goals.

Make your weekend great!

Boyd Myers
Personal Trainer in San Antonio
Owner, San Antonio’s Top Personal Training Studio
16613 Huebner Rd (corner of Huebner and Bitters)
210.391.1454

It is human nature to attempt to walk before we crawl. Unfortunately, just walking into a gym does not make you an elite athlete. That takes years of training and perfecting principles and techniques of whatever your specialty may be.

Weight training is no different. When I work with someone, we begin at the basic level: form must be perfected. There’s NO cheating. Safety is paramount. Ironically, when I train people that have in-depth exercise histories, they often respond to my training very quickly because those “bottom 2 inches” of a given exercise, control of the weight and attention to detail on proper form recruits muscles they’ve long considered problem areas and helps them rapidly get through a self-perceived plateau.

Here are five basic things that every weight trainer should pay close attention to:

Range of Motion.
(ROM) This refers to the complete movement of a joint. To improve a joints ability to perform, every muscle spanning a specific joint must be recruited and trained appropriately, which is accomplished by performing exercises at complete ROM.

Resistance.
Simply put, the resistance is the load of a specific exercise. Resistance must be small enough to perform the full Range of Motion while keeping proper form yet heavy enough to tax the muscle for the desired amount of repetitions.

Repetitions.
Repetitions are the number of times an exercise is continuously performed during a “set”. In an upcoming post, I discuss how to determine the number of repetitions based on one’s goals, as a lot of people are confused and mislead by numbers of reps and what is achieved by performing a specific range of reps.

Rest.
Amount of rest between sets is also directly related to a specific training goal. The body has numerous pathways of energy and each pathway is utilized based the amount of rest between sets. Training is very specific, and the body will respond directly to how it is trained from a workload, repetition and rest standpoint.

Recovery.
Weirdly enough, recovery may be the most important, yet most dismissed of the five R’s. The body changes at rest during recovery. Training is simply the stimulus. There is a fine balance between training the body often enough to stimulate progress, while not taking too much time off between sessions to avoid regression.

These principles are broad, yet important to understand to take your body to the next level. The body is highly adaptive, and based on condition, what is appropriate for one person who may be trained may be entirely too much for someone who hasn’t trained. With that being said, being undertrained (not doing enough) is as common as doing too much.

Find an expert fitness trainer to help you determine what is the right balance for you!

Strong mind, strong body – be educated!

Boyd Myers
Personal Trainer in San Antonio
Owner, San Antonio’s Top Personal Training Studio
16613 Huebner Rd (corner of Huebner and Bitters)
210.391.1454

Hey San Antonio,

Monday has come and gone after a slow, relaxing weekend. I’m having a hard time believing my son starts Kindergarten in a week, and it has really made me understand the importance of cherishing every single minute of every single day.

I have a brutal training week scheduled for myself this week. Tuesday will be an attempt at a squat personal record, Wednesday will be an attempt at a bench press personal record, and Thursday will be an all out dead lift day. Mix it in with the brutal, all out assault full body workout that I will annihilate myself with on Saturday (my day of growth style training instead of total strength training) and I will be ready for another relaxing weekend next week. The current goals are to add strength (getting ready for a push/pull – aka dead lift/bench press meet) and slowly add muscle. My days of bulking up to 265lbs to diet down to compete in a bodybuilding show are long over. I prefer to stay lean all year round and add lean body mass at a much slower rate while keeping my body fat percentage in single digits. It’s healthier and in my opinion more enjoyable. Besides, keeping a high level of discipline from a nutritional standpoint makes it easy to switch into competition mode and be ready to diet down for my next bodybuilding show.

With this being said, I’m often asked if I only train bodybuilders and female fitness competitors. While I do assist numerous people with contest prep, it is actually a very small part of what I do. In reality, 90% of my clients are training to feel better and look better – lose body fat, tone up, become more defined, while feeling better and performing better in every aspect of their lives. My training philosophies vary greatly from client to client: no two workouts are ever the same and I integrate every aspect of training that has ever been used: high intensity, circuits, all out strength, full body, body parts, cross-training, plyometrics, Olympic Style lifts, powerlifting, etc, etc, etc. I believe in breaking the mold and the key to long term success is variety and regular progress.

It’s time to down my last meal of the day and get ready for bed, as I have a full slate of clients tomorrow. Mid-August is always a very busy time of year for me, as people have a bit more flexibility with the kids going back to school, and since I also extended my Two For One Training Special, I’ll be very busy. I have an awesome staff of expert trainers that are more than capable of handling the workload, so being busy is a very good thing in this business.

Train with a purpose – don’t waste a rep nor a second!!!

Boyd Myers
Personal Trainer in San Antonio
Owner, San Antonio’s Top Personal Training Studio
16613 Huebner Rd (corner of Huebner and Bitters)
210.391.1454