AGGRESSIVE STRENGTH MAGAZINE
ISSUE 108 - 9/12/2006
1. AGGRESSIVE STRENGTH QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"This is also why epidemics come to a crashing halt. Once you've had a particular strain of the flu, or the measles, you develop an immunity to it, and when too many people get immunity to a particular virus, the epidemic comes to an end."
- Malcolm Gladwell in the book "The Tipping Point"
Malcolm Gladwell's discussion of "immunity" in the marketplace in his excellent book "The Tipping Point" is fascinating to say the least. If you have a product or service you need to pick up this book. It will give you a much clearer perspective of the marketplace and how trends develop and take off. In addition it will help you avoid the numerous pitfalls that most marketers make. An interesting example of marketplace "immunity" that Gladwell covers is telemarketing.
When telemarketing first started in the 1970s it was a powerful medium to get a product or service in front of a potential consumer. The network of potential customers was immense and it seemed to work pretty well. In theory it made sense. Most people have phones and thus use the phone is a great way to reach most people. Telemarketing was pretty successful for a while. However, over the years it has become much less effective. I do not know anyone that enjoys getting a call from a telemarketer and personally I never give telemarketers the time of day. Like most people, I find telemarketing extremely irritating. The only thing more irritating is the "door to door" pitch which fortunately is not too common anymore as people became immune to it a long time ago. Similar to the "door to door" pitch, collectively we have become immune to telemarketing. Thus for most products and services, it is no longer an effective way to reach potential consumers.
Email marketing is in the same boat. Think back to when you first opened up an email account. It used to be exciting to get emails. You probably even used to read marketing pitches. However, now checking your email account is most likely a nuisance in which you delete 90% of your emails without ever opening them. Email marketing is still an effective way to reach potential buyers. However it is not nearly as effective as it used to be. At least in most cases.
When I started my online newsletter back in 2003 I knew I had to do something different. Most newsletters are 90% product pitches and 10% content. Recipients may look at the first few issues before they finally get fed up and develop an immunity which results in instant deletion of each issue. People are fed up with product and service pitches. People primarily use the internet for email and research. In other words, people use the internet to communicate with others and to acquire information. Thus if you send people actual useful information you are in line with people's actions on the internet.
Another mistake that many online marketers make is with regards to the frequency of emails. Some people send out a pitch everyday or several times per week. Big mistake and a great way to get your list immune to your message in no time at all. People get tired of receiving email pitches all of the time and eventually will not look at any of your emails and if they really get fed up, they will simply get off of your list. Thus, when I started my newsletter I decided that each issue needed to be content driven. My theory was by if I demonstrated value, people would want to purchase my products and services. Also, it would separate my newsletter from many other newsletters on the market. Next, I decided that the frequency would be at most once per week and only if I had something meaningful to say. In other words, I did not want to put out an issue just for the sake of putting it out. Once you set the bar high, you have to keep the quality up there. It is better to refrain from putting out an issue for a month or more rather then send out lower quality issues. Also, even if your newsletter is top notch, once people get used to it, they eventually become immune to it. Stop sending it out for a while and people become less immune to it and are more likely to read it.
The results have exceeded my expectations and as my newsletter list has grown tremendously so has my income. In fact I can state emphatically that my newsletter was the "tipping point" for my business. In other words, it was the major thing that resulted in the largest growth phase in my business. Being content driven helps get past the "immunity" in the marketplace and gets my products and services in front of the consumer. It is also not easily duplicated as it is not easy to have a strong content based newsletter.
Content driven marketing is the wave of the future and the future is now. It is my prediction that "over the top" marketing will go out of fashion in the near future. Consumers are becoming more and more fed up with marketing that is frankly an insult to their intelligence. Making a consumer feel like an idiot is not a way to build trust and makes them immune. Demonstrate value by giving away great information and people are more likely to see you message and feel comfortable paying for more information.
Live Life Aggressively!
Mike Mahler
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3. HELP THE KATRINA VICTIMS
My friend and top body worker Dianna Linden recently sent me a list of non-profit organizations for helping out the Katrina Victims. Here is the list:
- Operation USA http://www.opusa.org
- Mercy Corps http://www.mercycorps.org
- Oxfam America http://www.oxfamamerica.org
- America's Second Harvest http://www.secondharvest.org
I encourage you to take a look at the above organizations and make a donation to the one that sits well with you. Also if you want to help out animals, make a donation to http://www.bestfriends.org.
4. AGGRESSIVE STRENGTH POWER TALK
This issue's Aggressive Strength Power Talks is with top strength coach Alwyn Cosgrove. Alwyn Cosgrove is one of the most in-demand and exciting coaches, writers and speakers in the fitness industry today. He currently spends his time lecturing, teaching, training and writing and as the owner of Results Fitness in Santa Clarita , CA . Make sure you check out his website: AlwynCosgrove.com.
MM: How did you get into training?
AC: I was a competitive fighter - TKD, open martial arts and kickboxing. After winning a few fights, and losing a few, I realized that the people I beat or didn't beat knew the same stuff as I did. This fascinated me. How could one man beat another man who had the exact same knowledge about fighting? Strategy plays a part, but that's part of what you should already know.
It kind of hit me that the only thing separating the winner from the loser was how they applied the techniques: how fast they moved, how hard they hit, how long they could go for. When technical skill was identical between two competitors, the strongest and fastest athlete would win almost 100% of the time.
In other words, it was fitness and conditioning that would end up determining who took home the gold. If you take boxing as an example, you've really only got four possible techniques - jab, cross, hook, and uppercut. It's not a secret punch that separates the best from the rest.
With this in mind, I started studying physiology and the methodology of training. This engulfed me. I went to college in Scotland to study it, continued on to a college in England to study some more, and I am still trying to figure it out.
MM: What are the biggest mistakes that trainees make?
AC:
MM: With regards to successful fat loss, what % is training and what % is diet? What about strength and size training?
AC: Well with fat loss, you can get lean without training at all so diet is the most important factor there.
For strength and size training I read a study recently that showed an increase in cross sectional area when resistance training on an 800 calorie per day diet. For example, if you trained with the Westside barbell team and ate hot dogs all day, you?d still get bigger and stronger than if you ate a perfect diet and didn?t train at all right? So for strength and size training is more important.
However, for both, the sum of the parts will be greater than the whole. Training without respect to diet, and dieting without attention to training is a thankless task.
An interesting point though that I've noticed over the years is that there is almost a complete ignorance of training for fat loss and nutrition for gaining size and strength. Skinny guys always think it's their training. Fat guys always think it's their diet. Usually skinny guys need a better diet and fat guys need a better training program.
MM: What are the five most important things for a weight lifter to do to ensure success?
AC:
MM: Many trainees make the mistake of knowing more about nutrition supplements than effective training. What is the benefit if any of nutrition supplements and are there any that you recommend?
AC: I think a supplement can speed up your results and enhance your progress. But a lot of people have the idea that a supplement stimulates progress or creates progress where nothing was happening before. This isn?t true.
If your diet and training were to produce a 12lb fat loss and a 6lb muscle gain in 12 weeks, the addition of supplements may get you there in ten weeks.
But if your diet and training aren?t producing any results ? you can take $100 worth of supplements daily and you won?t see shit.
As far as what works ? the supplements that have stood the test of time are protein and carb powders, essential fatty acids and creatine. I?d add to that a multivitamin and an antioxidant. There?s really not much else I?d recommend on a regular basis.
MM: Can you provide an example of an effective program for strength training? Fat loss?
AC: For fat loss I like anything that creates metabolic disturbance and raises metabolism significantly and for long periods of time. So for that as my goal I favor interval training with full body strength training.
For strength I favor an upper-lower split with a single max effort exercise and usually a series of repetition effort work to follow. Basically it?s modified from the Westside powerlifting model.
MM: In addition to tons of athletes using steroids, testosterone and GH are far more available legally to the masses. Do for see an increase in ?regular people? test- driving these substances?
AC: I think so, but I think that there will be an increase in legal HRT use amongst those who are eligible. The system right now is screwed up. A ?normal? testosterone level is considered to be 200-900. Let?s say that I am sitting at 700 all my life. Then I start getting negative effects ? depression, lack of sex drive etc. I get a test and I?m at 350. That?s half my normal levels. You?ll feel like shit! But your test will come back within normal limits. And you wont? get any help. I think we should all get tested at 21 or so and have that as your lifetime baseline. Any deviation from that and you can get a script. What?s weird is that a ?transsexual? male, once approved psychologically can take feminizing drugs to make him into a woman. But a man can?t take drugs to make him more of a man! What an ass backward world we live in.
MM: What are the benefits of strength training that one can transfer to other areas of life?
AC: I hate to use the term ?functional strength? but that?s what we?re talking about. The ability to perform real-life tasks like moving furniture, or carrying a heavy bag of groceries on one end ? to full contact fighting at the other end. In the majority of sports and physical activities males outperform females. Why? Strength. That?s how much of an edge it can give you.
MM: Any new projects in the works?
AC: I'm about to release three products in a package ? Afterburn II which is a continuation of my fat loss workout series, Real World Fat Loss ? which will cover in depth the theory behind fat loss programming and explode all the myths associated with that. Also included in the package will be 101 Fat Loss workouts on Cd-Rom. This is essentially a collection of fat loss workouts using weights that my clients have used ? literally straight from my files. I'll be releasing this package in October.
MM: Thanks for doing the interview Alwyn and readers make sure you check out Alwyn's site: AlwynCosgrove.com.
5. AGGRESSIVE STRENGTH TRAINING ARTICLE
Practice A Little Patience With Your Kettlebell Cleans
By Tom Corrigan, RKC
When most beginners start learning the Clean, they usually bang their forearms up quite a bit before mastering it. To avoid this, there are many tricks and techniques, but one I've used with great success is to have the beginners practice doing pulls first. They pull the KB to their stomach level, letting the bell become weightless for an instant at the top. The KB should hang there horizontally before going back down. Their forearm should also be horizontal, and their upper arm should be tucked close to their side. Don't move onto doing Cleans until you master the pulls, "floating" the KB just right. Have patience - you will be getting good conditioning from doing the pulls, and if you need to rack the KB, you can cheat-curl it into place with help from your other hand.
Once your Pull is mastered, slowly transition into doing Cleans. For example, you've been doing Pulls for sets of five. Now do four Pulls and on the fifth rep, just as you float the KB, punch the handle down, in, then up. You should end in the racked position with your thumb near your sternum, and the bell resting in the triangle formed by your forearm and upper arm. Do this for a few workouts. Then you will do three Pulls and two Cleans. Later you will do two Pulls then three Cleans, then just one Pull, and finally you will be able to do sets of five Cleans without beating up your forearms. It will take some patience, but you will be rewarded with having great technique and bruise-free forearms.
Tom as some Beginner and Intermediate workshops on Sept. 30th and on Oct. 1st. at CrossFit North in Seattle, WA. Email Tom for more info at kbfiremantom@yahoo.com
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10. KETTLEBELL TRAINING INFORMATION PAGE (NEW)
http://www.mikemahler.com/kettlebell_info.html
11. AGGRESSIVE STRENGTH MAGAZINE ARCHIVES
http://www.mikemahler.com/newsletter
12. AGGRESSIVE STRENGTH ARTICLES
http://www.mikemahler.com/articles.html
13. AGGRESSIVE STRENGTH TRAINING JOURNAL
http://www.mikemahler.com/journal.html
14. RECOMMENDED READING LIST
http://www.mikemahler.com/reading.html
Until next time.
Live Life Aggressively!
Feel free to email me with your comments and feedback at mahler25@yahoo.com
Mike Mahler