There were ups and there were downs, but there were no wins.  There was alot of learning.  There were times where the confusion reigned supreme.  At the same time, there were alot of lessons Matty learned throughout the season.  He progressed as a hockey player and a human being.  He is now more of an athlete than when the season started.  For that I am eternally thankful.

Matty will take the lessons he has learned and absorb them in the off season. He will work hard to get into the best shape of his life.  He has committed to a goal of getting in the best shape of his life by the time tryouts come (early June 2009).  He has a trainer (me) who is going to see to it that he makes that goal as long as he wants it.  I will not (and I’ve told him this) push him to go to the gym if he is not going.  However, when in the gym, I will push him to achieve his absolute best.  I will push him to give his best effort always. 

There are lessons here for all of us.  I honestly think I have a topic for a third book that will be about lessons learned from losing.  Winning is incredible.  We’ve done it on every hockey team he’s ever been on.  However, losing is also incredible.  There were bonds made with other people that are extremely strong.  There are parents that we will stay in touch with and kids we hope to see again next season.  Losing has brought us closer together than winning ever could have.  We have learned to celebrate the small victories.  This is something everyone should learn.

There is a great discussion starting up on Facebook about the topic of seeing progress.  If you are on Facebook, join the discussion here.

I believe it is true that most people are not successful from a mechanical standpoint.  They have failed time and again with diet and fitness programs.  They opt for the “topical ointment of behavior modification” when the situation itself is much deeper than any topical ointment can reach.  They seek answers from every single source they can find.  Unfortunately, everything sounds reasonable and logical, so they wind up starting one program, doing it for a short time and then finding another program and switching to it.  This is what is meant by “topical ointment of behavior modification” and it is a dangerously slipperly slope. 

As Carlos so aptly points out, “[t]he answer to our failures may not be in the next or latest diet or program.”  I will go even further and guarantee you that the answer to these failures is not in the next or latest diet or program.  The answer lies within ourselves.  Finding the reasons might not be easy at all.  There are “Unresolved issues” as Carlos refers to them and they are generally hidden from view.  What is hidden within these “unresolved issues”?  Is there some deep-seated pain that is causing you to lose your commitment to your goals?  Did someone’s words cause you to believe you cannot do it?  Whatever the answer, there are events in everyone’s lives that cause “unresolved issues” and the only real solution is to determine what those “unresolved issues” are, how they came about and then tackle them directly.

As Carlos points out, “very often hidden within these events is an unbearable pain that we would rather not face.”  The pain is something we probably didn’t create, but we perpetuate.  The memory of the pain lives on inside our mind and we don’t set ourselves free from it.  Sometimes it involves forgiveness.  Forgiveness is so essential because it enables us to move forward as a free person.  When we fail to forgive we simply tie ourselves to the past and become a prisoner of the even that needs forgiveness.  This is where everything gets very interesting to me.

Carlos talks alot about the “solutions” we attempt.  He talked to me about this on the phone several weeks ago and I wrote down the following in my journal:

Solutions become crutches that keep us from really solving the unresolved issues. What seems like a solution is really nothing more than a bandage that hides the wound itself from sight.

As I read Unfinished Business, this comment came back to me over and over again.  Carlos talks about how food is treated as a problem.  It reminds me of so many people who have written about their fat loss journey and about how they struggle with food.  I used to be one of those people.  I used to eat when I was stressed.  I used to eat when I had alot of planning to do.  I used to eat the wrong things.  I used to self-medicate with food.  I realized that for me, the unresolved issues had to do with things I was told as I was growing up, things I vowed never to do with my own children.  Whenever I tried anything new I was told that it “wasn’t right” for me or I would “never be able to do it” or a multitude of other things.  How do you think those things effected me as I started down the physique transformation path?  Obviously it played a huge part because I was conditioned to think that nothing I tried would ever work. 

My original solution was to immerse myself in any information I could get so that I could “learn” and then conquer the problem.  As I learned principles from Carlos, I learned that immersing myself in information was not the right thing to do.  The right thing was to hold onto the right information and discard everything else.  It is why I am creating https://www.fitnessexpose.com.  It is why I am so passionate about this blog.  It is why I am writing 2 books right now.  I have seen the light.  I have dealt with the underlying problem, the unfinished business, and now I am pursuing principles that are guaranteed to bring me success through the hard work I am putting in.

Matty’s Workout Log:

I have alot of thinking to do because I need to rework parts of my accountability plan.  I want to do weekly video podcasts, but life keeps getting in the way.  There will be one for sure this weekend.

There are those people that no matter how things are explained to them, they just never get it.  You can tell them that they need to do cardio to burn fat and they will find a reason why they don’t get it.  You can explain to them that they need to lift weights to gain muscle to aid in burning fat, but they just won’t listen.

My good friend, Carlos DeJesus, has many times discussed this very issue with me.  Carlos made me understand that all you can do as a mentor is put the information into a person’s hands, but you can’t do the work for them.  They have to want it themselves.  You can’t make them want to lose weight, burn fat or workout.  There is a tendency to get frustrated with the person, but even that is futile.  Just lay the information out there and if they take it, great, if not, eventually just stop offering the information.  People need to want it and if they must be forced it isn’t worth it.

What more will people need to hear?  We have the Experiment of One right in front of us and we have Tom Venuto, an extremely well-respected fitness expert, saying that there is no single program for everyone.  This is such an important topic because it is one of the major sources of confusion amongst those who browse the web looking for fitness information.  Don’t be fooled by the idea that you can just follow a preset menu and you will be fine.  That just isn’t going to work.

I speak about this in the second lesson of the free eCourse you can get by registering at https://www.fitnessexpose.com.  In fact, there will soon be alot of wonderful information available at that site.  All you have to do to get the free eCourse on how to get into the best shape of your life is sign up at https://www.fitnessexpose.com.  It is that easy.  You won’t be sorry that you did it either.