AGGRESSIVE STRENGTH MAGAZINE

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ISSUE 68 - 6/16/2005

1. AGGRESSIVE STRENGTH QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Eighty Percent Of Success Is Showing Up."
- Allen Stewart Konigsberg

I disagree with the above quote in the strongest terms possible and can provide countless examples of how simply showing up is far from 80% of success. First, lets look at just about any fitness gym around. Do you really think that by simply showing up you will get great results? Of course not and you can visit just about any commercial gym and have this point validated. Year after year you will see members that simply show up thinking that they are going to get results. The problem is that they have not made any progress in years. They have lost little or no weight and have not gotten stronger. If 80% of success involved just showing up, then they should have some substantial progress to show for their time. The problem is that showing up is the easy part. What you do when you show up is the hard part.

What is far more important than just showing up, is having an effective game plan and putting it into action consistently. It is not enough to just work out. You should now what you are training for and have a clear idea of what your long term goals are, short term goals, and daily goals. In other words, what do you want to achieve in one year, three months, and at your next workout. You should keep a training journal so you can track your progress and make mid course corrections if necessary.

Running a business is the same deal. Lets use someone who works at home as an example. Showing up for this person may involve turning on the computer and responding to customer emails and some lead generation activities. What if this person simply turns the computer on and surfs the net for a few hours, checks his or her email twenty times a day even though he or she only gets five or so emails per day, and then spends the rest of the day on chat rooms and message boards under the premise that it is good for business. Is this person showing up? Sure, they are turning on the computer, checking email etc. Is that enough for success? Depends on how your define success. If making a $100.00 a month is success, then sure. However, if you want to build a six figure plus income, it will take far more than just showing up. They are only so many hours in the day and the clock is always against you. You have to engage in activities that maximize your time.

Lets use promoting a successful workshop as another example. As many of you know I do a lot of kettlebell seminars across the U.S. Over the years, I have developed a promotion system that works very well and ensures that I have great turn outs at each seminar. Without careful planning and proper promotion, each seminar would be a disaster. Basically, promoting a successful seminar is like promoting a movie. Many steps have to be taken for a successful premiere. Showing up to teach a seminar is certainly not 80% of achieving a successful seminar. That line of thinking will have you end up with no one showing up. 80% of having a successful seminar is contingent on what you do to get people to the seminar. You should know exactly how much money you will be making at a seminar and how many people are going to be there before you show up to teach. Of course teaching a seminar well involves a lot of hard work, but that is the easy part compared to getting people to actually show up.

If you want to run a successful business you should wake up every morning and have a goal that you want to accomplish that day for your business. Every week you should be keeping tabs of what is happening and certainly every month you should know what your income is. Moreover, you should know exactly where you want to be in three months, six months, and next year. Just showing up will cause unproductive days to turn into unproductive weeks. Then unproductive weeks will turn into unproductive months, and so on. Clear well defined goals and a daily action plan towards that goal is where 80% of success lies. However, any action is not enough.

It is easy to waste time with ineffective promotion tactics that will get you nowhere fast. Here is one example that I did in a prior business. I would go to downtown Washington DC and hand out 1000-1500 business card five days a week. Each card had a product pitch on it. I would say that 95% of the people threw the card away immediately and the other 4.5% put the cars in their pocket where they never say the light of day again until the had a quick ride into the trash can. Then 0.05 will call you up and waste your time. This is an example of taking action, but it does not mean that it will be productive. On the other hand,. in my current business, I write articles all of the time for the internet and in print magazines which are great for positioning and website traffic which is ultimately great for product sales, workshop registrations. I get paid for many of these articles and thus in essence I am getting paid to promote my business and getting paid while I build my business. The above example demonstrates clearly that productive action does not necessarily have a correlation with time expenditure. It takes me less time to write an article for publication then the time it took to hand out 1500 cards (including getting to the city and back) and honestly much less painful. Nothing like face to face rejection repeated constantly to ruin your day ;-)

In conclusion, I would say that showing up is 20% of success and that 80% is what you do when you show up. What are you prepared to do to achieve your goals? What you do when you show up will answer that question.

Live Life Aggressively!

Mike Mahler

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2. AGGRESSIVE STRENGTH TRAINING ARTICLE

Get Stronger And Build Confidence With Isometric Holds

At my kettlebells seminars, I have people do some isometric holds with a kettebell that they cannot press for a few seconds. I have them focus on holding the kettlebell in the clean position and contracting as many muscle groups as possible. I want them to realize that the Kettlebell Military Press is a full body demonstration of tension rather than a shoulder exercise. While they are holding the bell I tell them to crush grip the handle as hard as possible. Then to contract their forearms, biceps, triceps, and lats. Then I tell them to push their stomach down is if they are bracing for a punch, to contract their glutes as if they are bracing for a kick and to screw their feet into the floor. I have them hold that tension peak for a few seconds and then tell them to relax for a few seconds before going back to a lighter bell and pressing it. What happens? The students always feel much stronger. What is going on here? For one thing, by taking the press out of the equation, the student does not have to worry about missing the lift. All they have to do is get the bell to the clean position and hold it there. Next, since the student is not focusing on pressing the bell with solid form, the student can place of all the energy on building full body tension. The more a student has to do when learning tension, the less likely they are to learn it well. Finally, working against a heavier weight activates more muscle fibers which can be engaged with a lighter weight. The end result is the student will have more confidence, will be able to apply full body tension more effectively, and will be able to activate more muscle fibers. A sure-fire recipe for increasing strength.

Of course Isometric holds can be applied to other forms of strength training. For example, if you want to improve your Military press, place the bar in a power rack at chest level and add 25lbs over your current one rep max. Un rack the bar and hold it at the starting position for five seconds. Just focus on getting as tight as possible. Take a one-minute break and then do two more isometric holds. Then go start your regular workout. Try doing this for a month and let me know what happens. You can use the same technique for Barbell squats. Load up a Barbell to 50lbs over your one rep max and simply hold the top position for a few seconds.

Pick a few exercises that you want to improve and try doing a few sets of isometric holds before your regular workouts. Email me with your results.

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http://www.mikemahler.com/kettlebell_info.html

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11. RECOMMENDED READING LIST

http://www.mikemahler.com/reading.html

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Until next time.

Live Life Aggressively!

Feel free to email me with your comments and feedback at mahler25@yahoo.com

Mike Mahler

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