Naturally Intense High Intensity Personal Training™ Blog

I woke up this morning and by the time I got around to checking my emails, no less than five of my personal training clients had sent me a link to the Time Magazine article ‘Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin’. They all sent it with a word or two that I should write a rebuttal of sorts, since their own experiences completely contradicted everything that was said, and more over the article itself focused on conventional training programs- which for years I myself have stated are useless in terms of losing weight. (See Aerobics- A Bad Idea For Weight Loss).

It is a bit sad to see that in this time of epidemic obesity, and with all the money spent on so called research into weight reduction, few are spending time doing anything more than producing either sensationalized articles, such as the one referred to in Time Magazine, or flawed so called expert opinions on protocols that do not work. Yes, it is true, if you hired your average personal trainer today, went to the gym five days a week, sweated, grunted and groaned with the standards set by all the personal training certifying bodies and following the guidelines set forth by certified nutritionists and registered dietitians- the odds are that you will not indeed see much in terms of weight loss- and whatever weight you do lose will come right back, as the guidelines are either far too extreme (exercise wise) or far too inclusive (diet wise) to effect the results that people really want to see.

The Truth- Most Conventional Weight Loss Programs, Products & Services Don’t Work

How do I know this- well, twenty years of being a part and parcel of the industry, for one, and the fact that just about 85% of all of my personal training clients over the past 18 years all followed those very same protocols- most with a trainer’s supervision and got nowhere. They didn’t end up looking like the models in the Bally’s commercials, nor did they walk away from their months and years of toil with rippling abs. More shocking is that they didn’t see much of a change in their overall health. How could they? When I followed the same training standards myself- and guess what happened? Not much of anything to be honest with you.

You see, people make a lot of money within the health and fitness industry, and there are billions to be made. With every edict passed down from the CDC and National Association of Sports Medicine to the latest weight loss guru on the Oprah Winfrey show, the media jumps on it and millions are made in gym memberships, personal training sessions, supplement purchases, exercise equipment and fitness classes. But there is an irony here that only seems to occur within the field of weight loss and health improvement- that people routinely pay money for equipment, trainers, gym memberships, supplements, dietary books and plans, don’t lose any significant weight or see major changes in their body or their health, but still persist in spending money on it?

The Solution That Would Help Everyone Get Into Shape & Reduce The Obesity Epidemic

So how could you possibly know, with all the hoopla out there about training this way, taking this class, eating that way, taking this pill or powder, whether the routine, pill, class or exercise protocol will work? Simple, and I am not sure why consumers have not demanded it themselves- you place a money back guarantee on it. Can you image how much weight America would lose in three months if everyone had to guarantee their services in the health and fitness industry! It would be a revolution- and for the life of me I can’t see why it isn’t happening already. No one goes to a restaurant, pays for a meal and then walks out of the restaurant without eating, but in the fitness field it happens every day. Forget about the increase in balance, mental clarity and perceived levels of energy, people pay to lose weight, transform their bodies and improve their health. No matter how great the person may feel from whatever service or product that they paid for- unless their bottom line is met- they should get a refund! That’s right, a refund. If you took a fat burner and didn’t lose weight, had your life changed and looked like the models on the ads in spite of following the directions to the ‘T’- you deserve your money back! If you paid for a diet book and you lost weight and then couldn’t keep it up because the restrictions were too extreme or too unrealistic for long term adherence- and you regained your weight- you should get a refund. If you joined a gym and got no instruction save a cursory free personal training session or two, or if you did hire a trainer but didn’t experience the earth shaking changes that are promised to all before the signing of the contract- you should get a refund!

Within my personal training practice, for the past 18 years, I have kept my part of the bargain from the start with a money back guarantee for anyone that follows my high intensity training protocol and dietary system and not see any results within 2 weeks. I go one step further and refrain from taking money from my clients in advance for sessions that they have not used, instead preferring to have them pay as they go on a monthly basis. You see, my take is that if someone is paying you to lose weight, and radically change their body and improve their health, performance and well being, they should be so happy with the ongoing results that they see as time goes on that it motivates them to stay with the program. That being said, it holds me to a higher standard of having to deliver on what my clients pay good money for, instead of having them locked in an ironclad contract where they essentially can make no progress whatsoever and I still get paid, even if they don’t show up for their sessions or not. Absolutely ridiculous!

The onus has to be on the service provider to see that the consumer makes their goal a reality- and the consumer as well has to demand that the industry be held to a higher standard. As I said before, too many people come to me after having spent thousands of dollars on training, supplements and diets without even coming close to seeing their goals materialize. The frustration , however is put back on the consumer, as the party line is always that they didn’t want it badly enough, or that they didn’t give it 100% but there is never an acknowledgement that the training program, supplement, or diet just doesn’t work- and therein lies the problem.

What Most Certainly Does Not Work For Long Term Weight Loss

I can tell you this from two decades in the field:

1. Any supplement/pill/powder that can really make a major change in your body is going to cause you more health problems that it is worth and is most certainly either illegal or will be soon enough. Everything else doesn’t work with any degree of efficacy to truly make a change enough so that your life becomes significantly different.
2. Any training program/class or protocol that includes aerobics won’t be your best bet for weight loss.
3. Any training program/class/protocol that has you in the gym for an hour or more for several days a week won’t work long term, as you are going to (a) burn out and get tired of it and (b) not see that much of a weight loss or muscle gain.
4. Any diet that is restrictive and you cannot willingly see yourself following for the next 50 years, won’t work- so don’t even try it. The majority of the population needs to make their own personal decisions on eating, and my experience has found that this comes only when the body is pushed to change through exercise. So if you aren’t eating to lose weight because your body is telling you to eat that way- you had better accept that when you fall off the wagon (and you will eventually) that you will regain the weight that you lost.

So what does work? Well, funny enough, the clients that sent me the article all do no more than three workouts per week, with each workout lasting no longer than ten minutes, and no cardio whatsoever. How is it possible that all of them have not only lost significant amounts of weight, improved their health parameters, increased their endurance and transformed their bodies? Simple- because the system they use works, and if it didn’t- they would all have their money back! Isn’t that the way it is supposed to be?

Kevin Richardson is one of the most sought after personal trainers in New York City, a prominent health and fitness writer and the founder of the Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise™- a system designed to help you do everything from lose weight to build muscle using 10 minute workouts.

For most personal training clients one of the most amazing aspects of the Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise™ isn’t the fantastic changes that they see in their bodies, but rather the ease with which they find themselves eating better as a result of the training. The core goal of the 10 minute workouts is to bring about a change in your body, in terms of increasing muscle mass and energy requirements by forcing the body to really work at its peak. All our clients are given dietary guides designed specifically for them, their goals and their lifestyle, and almost all of them balk at the idea that they will be able to follow the recommendations laid out in their individual eating guide. However as time goes by, they are astonished to find that the junk foods that they once ate no longer appeal to them and in fact they are more attracted to the foods on their dietary guide than the foods that they thought they could never give up! The analogy I like to present is that of a car. Most people have shall we say a standard run of the mill Honda Accord. It’s a pretty average vehicle, and they use it to go to work during the week and occasionally for a road trip on the weekends. Now with such a car, it would not at all be a problem to fill it up with regular unleaded fuel. Sure it is not the best quality of gas, but for the level of performance required, you really don’t see much of a difference. Now by starting the Naturally Intense™ System, those 10 minute workouts take you from driving a regular Honda, and upgrade you to a Ferrari Testarossa! And you have to really use that car, as you are no longer just making small trips here and there, but taking your high performance sports car and really pushing its limits on a regular basis. Driving it at top speeds in car races! Now if you were to put unleaded regular gas in your Ferrari and try to do several laps at over 200 miles per hour, you would immediately feel a difference in performance! In fact you wouldn’t even consider putting anything but high octane fuel in your car to really get the most out of it, and the same rules apply to your body! The holistic approach of the Naturally Intense™ System is that by changing the body, you change the mind. By increasing your muscle mass and in a sense turning you into a high performance machine, you lose the desire over time to put anything but the best quality fuels in your body. This organic approach to dietary modification is one that has helped so many people that have struggled for years with their eating, and is the foundation for the lifestyle change that is the end result of the Naturally Intense™ System. My philosophy is and always will be that if you are eating good foods because you have to, and not because you want to- you are not healthy. True health can only occur if the foods that you want to eat and the foods that are good for you are the same. Thus my system serves to teach people to self regulate and is not a method that tells anyone what not to do at any time.

Kevin Richardson is one of the most sought after personal trainers in New York City and the founder of the Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise™- a system designed to help you do everything from lose weight to build muscle using 10 minute workouts.

Naturally Intense High Intensity Training 10 Minute Workouts Will Increase Your Muscle Mass

The central point of the high intensity 10 minute workouts is that it is the most efficient and effective way of increasing muscle mass. To stimulate muscle mass there must be a stress strong enough to force your body to adapt. To do this we employ high intensity workouts that take you to the peak of your performance threshold, at times to the point of momentary muscle failure. To make it impossible for your muscles to get used to the stimulation and stop responding (the almost inevitable plateau that occurs in time from conventional training) each workout is radically different from the other, but designed specifically for you to ensure that your body responds and that you are able to achieve your goals in as safe a manner as possible. The workouts are of a short duration because I found over the years that few people could sustain the degree of intensity required to really bring about muscle growth for longer than 10 minutes. The fact that your muscles only grow while at rest accounts for the reason training sessions are done no more than three times a week. Since resistance training is essentially tearing down your muscles on a cellular level, and the process of getting those muscles stronger and larger occurs only when you are not training, it makes sense that you spend more time resting than training. If you train too often, your muscles never have a chance to rebuild themselves and so you don’t really make much progress, and in time you end up overtraining. (Which is when you feel tired, run down and no longer want to continue working out). The Naturally Intense™ System thus serves to increase your muscle mass and consequently, since muscle requires calories to be maintained, your body will burn more calories at rest and during your workouts to sustain your increased muscle. This increase in muscle mass will also go a long way in improving your physique with a more toned appearance. Equally important, the increased muscle means you’ll be able to do more now and as you get older.

Kevin Richardson is the creator of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training™ a lifetime natural bodybuilder and founder of Naturally Intense Personal Training NYC. Get a copy of his free weight loss ebook here.

Hi, my name is Kevin Richardson and I am the founder of the Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise™ and head trainer of Naturally Intense NYC Personal Training Services. I created and refined the system over the course of 18 years as part of my own quest for the most efficient and effective method of training and it has been instrumental in my success and the success of the hundreds that I have had the honor of training over the almost two decades of my career as a personal trainer. Over the next twenty blog posts I will detail exactly what you can accomplish using the high intensity and holistic dietary practices of the Naturally Intense™ System.

Will Help You Decrease Your Body Fat. The first thing you will notice- and in as little as two weeks, is a reduction in your body fat. The Naturally Intense™ System helps you lose body fat in three simple ways-

The Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise™

Step 1: by increasing your metabolism from the muscle mass built from the high intensity workouts your body will burn more fat while doing nothing. Muscle is metabolically active, which means that you need to use up energy to sustain it, so you will find yourself naturally losing body fat as you gain muscle.

Step 2: the increased muscle mass and the high performance demands from the workouts will change your nutritional requirements. You will find that you no longer crave junk foods and instead you will naturally gravitate towards the foods that your body needs- which in time will result in fat loss that you can easily maintain, since you will no longer want to eat the foods that will increase your body fat in the first place.

Step 3: The increased energy that you will have from the combination of the 10 minute workouts and your new dietary plan will encourage you to be far more active than you were before and you’ll burn even more calories naturally as a result of your increased activity. Not only is a favorable change in body composition something that will increase your self esteem but it also reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity- some major life threatening diseases!

Kevin Richardson is the creator of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training™ a lifetime natural bodybuilder and founder of Naturally Intense Personal Training NYC. Get a copy of his free weight loss ebook here.