Author: Tony

There are a few things one will notice upon walking into our facility (Cressey Performance in Hudson, MA).

1. No foo-foo machines. It’s a place designed by athletes, for athletes. As well as for those who are serious about making a serious commitment to their long term health. Although we did break down and buy a treadmill a few weeks back. You know, to make the place look official.

2. Trainers/coaches/employees who actually look like they lift weights. Ever walk into a gym and notice that some of the trainers look like they could use a trainer themselves? It’s akin to the health teacher who smokes; who’s going to take advice from him/her?

3. Everyone wears Nike Frees or is training barefoot 50% of the time. One of the first things we do with new clients is to have the “shoe talk” with him or her. More often than not, people need to get out of their atrocious footware. Many postural issues and dysfunctions up the kinetic chain can be attributed to what someone is wearing on their feet while at work (ahem ladies: are high heels worth it?) and to the gym.

Nike Frees are designed to emulate barefoot training and allow trainees to learn to use the small, intrinsic muscles of the feet again. Additionally, they will work wonders in terms of improving ankle mobility, which as I stated above, will go a long ways as far as fixing any “issues” up the kinetic chain (ie: lower back pain, etc). On a side note: they’re super comfy and will totally help you score more chicks.

It should be noted that I don’t make a dime endorsing Nike Frees, but if there happens to be a Nike executive reading this blog, feel free to send me a check:

Tony Gentilcore

18 Rock Hard Abs Boulevard

Awesomeville, USA

This is a video I took of my client Tina over the weekend while she was training. A few things to note:

1. Tina works her ass off. Matter of fact, she once split her pants wide open while warming up to squat and even though she didn’t have an extra pair of pants, she was willing to wear a towel around her ripped pair in order to finish her training session. So for all those people who “forget” to bring their workout shoes to the gym, and as a result, end up going home; you could learn something from Tina.

2. Tina still looks like a girl, despite being stronger than most of the men she trains around. She’s actually rather petite, coming in at 5’2″ and 145 lbs. She’s also considering training for her first power-lifting meet sometime this year. This coming from a girl who when I met her, was reluctant to lift anything over 25 lbs.

3. You might be wondering what the heck is Tina doing?

Name of Movement: Giant Cambered Bar Box Squat. The cambered bar tends to be much easier on the shoulders and provides a different training stimulus as compared to a regular “straight” bar.

Box Height: 12 inches

Bar Weight: 205 lbs. She also had three chains (20 lbs each) on each side of the bar which adds roughly 120 lbs of additional weight at the top of the movement. However, in her case, the chains weren’t adjusted properly so she had roughly an additional 60-80 lbs of weight at the top of the movement. As she squatted down, the bar would “de-load,” with the chains resting on the floor. Tina performed this for 6 sets of 3.

4. A few of the high school guys that were in the facility training at the same time as her were later found hiding in the corner in the fetal position, sucking their thumbs.

5. To all the women who read this blog: Not every woman will be able to train like Tina does, but that’s not to say that you shouldn’t want to get stronger. Put down the 20 lb body bar and start using some real weight for peets sake. Oh, and just so you know, lifting heavy weights won’t make you “big a bulky.” That 4th Christmas cookie you just ate will.

Two words: Beef Jerky

I can’t think of many things more perfect than beef jerky. Scratch that. Kate Beckinsale in a bikini feeding me grapes while I’m watching Star Wars in my private jet on the way to Hawaii would constitute as perfect. What can I say? I’m a man of simple pleasures. But after that, not many things top beef jerky.

As an added bonus; eating beef jerky will automatically make you more manly (my apologies to any women reading this blog today). What’s more manly than eating a bag of beef jerky? Matter of fact, if I had to list the top five manly things in the world they would be:

1. Eating beef jerky.

2. Leaving the toilet seat up and not giving a damn.

3. Getting teary eyed during the movie “Rudy.” What guy didn’t get emotional when they carried Rudy off the football field?

4. Fighting forest fires with your shirt off.

5. Calling your mom every weekend.

I work with many clients who sit in an office all day and have little to no time to eat often enough, let alone bring prepared meals with them to work. One simple solution is to put a bag of beef jerky in their desk drawer. For those busy-body types it’s a perfect snack. It’s easy to store, it’s a high protein/low-fat snack, and depending on what brand you get, it’s low carbohydrate as well.

Be leery of those brands that have more than five grams of carbohydrates per serving. It’s a safe bet that those brands with more than five grams per serving are loaded with additional sugar and preservatives that will do more harm than good. Read those labels!

One of the pitfalls of being a strength coach/personal trainer is that you can never escape the inevitable conversations you’re going to have with complete strangers once they know what you do for a living. To be honest, sometimes I feel like all those parents who dread the day they have to discuss the “birds and the bees” with their children. It’s just not fun.

I attended my girlfriend’s company Christmas Party over the weekend, and while I insisted that she tell her colleagues that I’m an ex-Special Forces operative whose bare hands have been classified as lethal weapons (along with his wit and charm), she refused, and told everyone that I work as a strength coach and personal trainer. So instead of me telling stories of how I have parachuted into active volcanoes and destroyed tanks just by looking at them, I resorted to discussing the finer points of A1 adrenoreceptors and B2 adrenoreceptors and how they correlate with stubborn fat loss. Boooorrrring.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE what I do and I thoroughly enjoy helping people reach their goals. But sometimes I just want to be brutally honest with people instead of being nice:

Random Person: “So Tony, your girlfriend tells me you’re one of those fitness type people.”

(Cue theme music from Jaws)

Me: “Yes I am.”

Random Person: Like, how can I lose 20 lbs?

Me: Stop drinking four glasses of wine every night. Don’t skip meals, thinking that saving your calories throughout the day justifies eating a whole pizza for lunch everyday. Get off the treadmill; it’s doing more harm than good. Lift heavy things off the the ground. Yoga mostly sucks; sweating in a 100 degree room doesn’t mean you will get lean. Eat more veggies; and no that lettuce on your roast beef sandwich doesn’t count. Don’t tell me you don’t have time to train. If you have enough time to watch 20 hours of television every week (the national average in the United States), you have enough time to go to the gym and train. Oh, and those 100 calorie snacks you’ve been bringing to work everyday (thinking they’re a healthy alternative) are about as useful as a one-legged man in a kickball tournament.

Contrary to what many people believe, there is no clear evidence that exists to link tightness or weakness of a particular muscle group to injury. However, it has been shown that a significant amount of injuries were noted in those trainees with right-left strength and/or flexibility imbalances (asymmetries).

When evaluating new clients, I always like to use certain movement patterns to find any right-left imbalances that may exist. Rather than putting each client under a looking glass, I’d much rather get them out on the floor and observe how they move and see what “shakes free.”

The half kneeling cable chop is a great assessment tool, and is also a exercise that I like to use in many of my clients’ training programs to improve overall core strength and endurance.

As I have stated on numerous occasions, the core’s main function is to keep the trunk over the pelvis by preventing hoop stress (rotation). Additionally, the core serves as an “intermediary,” transferring force in a spiral or diagonal pattern from the lower body to the upper body.

What’s great about this particular exercise is that it takes advantage of the body’s natural tendency to function in those same opposing spiral/diagonal movement patterns. The chop (or lift…which I’ll showcase some other time) can be performed in various lower body positions to specifically address and identify imbalances that may exist in the core.

Key Points to Remember:

1. There really isn’t much I can say that the video doesn’t show. The key here is to not cheat and make sure you complete quality repetitions. The moment you have to lean forward, or hike your hip, or rotate your shoulders to complete the movement, you know that either you’re using too much weight or an imbalance exists. If you do happen to find an imbalance between the left or right side, then you know which side needs more work.

We all know that in order to burn body fat, we have to provide some sort of caloric deficit (calories in must be less than calories out) to do so. Despite what many people claim, they are not the lone exception in all of human history that defies the laws of thermodynamics. As I have stated before, “you’re not that special.” I often find it comical when someone will just assume that their lack of progress (as far as fat loss) is due to a “buggy” thyroid, when in fact, a closer look at their daily diet and/or activity level tells us a completely different story.

A few quick thoughts:

1. It stands to reason that you have probably heard or seen the mantra that in order to lose a lb of fat per week, you must provide a caloric deficit of 500 kcals per day. The rationale is that because one pound of fat equates to roughly a 3500 kcal surplus, reducing your caloric intake and/or increasing your caloric expenditure by 500 kcal per day will result in one pound of fat loss per week. Let it be known that I HATE this approach (for a plethora of reasons that I won’t get into here), but for the sake of argument I will use it since this is what most people are familiar with.

How do most people try to pull off a 500 calorie deficit? If you’re like me, you wrestle polar bears for fun or fight global warming by washing your clothes on your abs (you know, cause it saves water). Since everyone can’t be me, lets assume that most (read: not all) trainees will revert to copious amounts of steady state cardio. How long do you think it would take you to burn 500 calories walking/jogging on a treadmill? For most it will take anywhere from 45-60 minutes. From a time efficiency standpoint, that doesn’t make much sense. We could spend an hour on the treadmill everyday OR we could just not eat that piece of homemade apple pie or that bowl of cereal that has been calling our name. Either way we provide a 500 calorie deficit, however from a time efficiency standpoint, not eating the piece of pie or bowl of cereal makes much more sense.

2. I can’t stress enough how important one’s overall nutrition is in regards to fat loss. As I have stated on numerous occasions, you can’t out train a poor diet. However, if I had to choose, in the beginning, I’d much rather see trainees increase their activity level through exercise to provide a caloric deficit (preferably lifting weights) than reduce their caloric intake to levels that would make Keira Knightely think you’re crazy.

In a nutshell, exercise (again, preferably lifting weights) is a metabolism booster, while continually reducing calories for an extended period of time is a metabolism killer. Many trainees make the mistake of reducing calories too low for too long and then are perplexed why they haven’t made any progress for weeks on end.

Over the weekend, my girlfriend and I were in Maine celebrating my birthday. Since my birthday is considered a state wide holiday up there, it was a weekend to remember. Lets just put it this way, if being awesome was like having the lamest line in Star Wars history (“Noooooooooooooooooooo!!”), then this past weekend would be Darth Vader.

Nonetheless, it was a spectacular weekend. While we did indulge ourselves with eating out at nice restaurants (desserts included), we didn’t use the entire weekend as an excuse to OVER indulge ourselves with two days worth of gluttony.

We made it a point to stay at a place we knew would have a kitchen in their units so that we could make our own meals when we wanted. Granted it’s a bit more expensive then staying in a regular hotel room, but in my opinion, it’s a cost that’s well worth it. In doing so we were able to stock our fridge with fresh fruit/veggies, cottage cheese, yogurt, mixed nuts, and eggs from the local grocery store. Matter of fact, grocery shopping was one of the first things we did when we arrived in Maine. As luck would have it, the store we were in was having a wine tasting that evening. Score!

We also made sure to scope out where the local gyms were located. Even though we were on “vacation,” we were still able to get one good training session in. Nothing spells “weekend getaway” then a heavy deadlift session on a Saturday morning.

Long story short, many people tend to use extended vacations or even short weekend getaways (like the one above) as an excuse to eat like crap and/or slack on their exercise routine. No one is saying that you can’t live a little and indulge a bit. In the grand scheme of things that’s what vacations are for. But I think it’s a major cop out when people try to make excuses and attempt to justify eating at the buffet three times per day because they didn’t plan ahead.

Not too long ago, I was chatting with a guy who was frustrated with his progress in the gym (trying to put on some mass) and mentioned to me that he dropped $150 at his local GNC on supplements the prior day. Upon asking him what he bought, he had no idea and couldn’t even remember the names or what the supplements were used for! Basically he walked into GNC and became an instant “BFF” with the sales clerk. For those out of the loop, “BFF” stands for Best Friends Forever. A “BFF” is someone whom you can always count on for support and who will always be there for a good ol’ fashioned tickle fight. I mean, don’t you watch MTV? Yeah, me neither.

Anyways this particular guy felt that because he wasn’t making any progress, he needed to buy supplements. We sat down for a few minutes to really delve into the issue. Upon ending our conversation we came up with the following facts:

1. He was training between 1.5-2 hours per day, six days per week; 60-90 minutes of weight training along with 30 minutes of cardio. For someone who has always had a hard time putting on weight (let alone quality mass), this would be the exact OPPOSITE approach I would take. In a nutshell, ectomorphic body-types (those who have a hard time putting on weight) would do better with LESS training volume. In his case I would cut total training down to three full-body training sessions per week (maybe four days with an upper/lower split) and cut out the excess cardio completely.

2. I asked him how many calories he was taking in per day. He had no clue. HUGE mistake! How is one supposed to make progress if he/she has no idea what or how much they’re eating? I asked him to break down an average day for me and we came to the conclusion that he was ingesting roughly 1500-1700 kcals per day (or barely enough calories to keep an Olsen Twin alive). It never ceases to amaze me how people will drastically UNDER-eat for their goals. You can’t build an impressive physique through sweat alone. You need to provide the raw nutrients the body needs to grow. Point. Blank. Period.

3. On an aside with the points made above, I’ll always come across guys in the same situation who mention to me, “there is no way I can eat 3000-4000 calories per day, I just can’t do it.” Well, if you’re the type of person who only eats two or three meals per day, then yes, you won’t be able to do it. There aren’t many people out there (outside of Rosie O’Donnell, oh snap) who can polish off two or three 1000-1500 calorie meals per day. What one needs to do is eat more often and spread their calories out over six to eight meals per day. If someone’s goal is to ingest 3000 calories per day, it’s a lot less daunting (not to mention much more manageable) to ingest six, 500 calorie meals than it is three, 1000 calorie meals.

Long story short, this gentleman did NOT need to go out and splurge on $150 worth of supplements. He just needed a swift kick in the pants and some guidance. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Supplements are progress ENHANCERS, not progress STARTERS. If you’re not making any progress (whatever your goal may be) with your training and/or diet alone, then buying enough supplements to start your own Olympic team isn’t going to cut it.