Chapter 3

The 10 Questions

1.   What is your goal? Meaning…where’s your point B!

2.   Is this a health or a fitness goal?

3.   Will this goal allow you to spiral out, to enlarge your life?

4.   What quadrant is your goal in?

5.   How old are you?

6.   What do you lift in the weightroom?

7.   What are your gaps and are you willing to go back to the basics?

8.   Let’s just double-check a few things…assess, reassess, re-reassess.

9.   The issues—Are you willing to correct your problems?

10. Would you mind if everything was seamless from start to finish?

So, these are the 10 questions. I’m going to call them tools, as these hold the answers that allow me to help you figure out the path. Some are like a GPS and others are more like the batteries that power the GPS. The first five are simple for anyone to answer, but require courage to deliver honest, useful answers. The second five take a bit more thought and work, but less courage.

What we have is a 10-question toolbox, followed by your answers. Then, the magic happens as I give you the answers to the answers!

The answers to the answers are these five principles.

1.   Strength training for lean body mass and joint mobility work trump everything else.

2.   Fundamental human movements are fundamental.

3.   Standards and gaps must be constantly assessed.

4.   The notion of park bench and bus bench workouts must be applied together throughout the training lifetime.

5.   Constantly strive for mastery and grace.

But, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Like the King in Alice in Wonderland tells us…

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely,
“and go on till you come to the end. Then stop.”

Coach Steve Ledbetter is an outstanding young coach who has taken the Intervention System and run with it. He outlined four of his clients for us, and his stories will give insights about applying Intervention to most people.

Coach Stevo’s Case One

This client is the dream of most trainers. She’s motivated and ready to work. But she’s also lost. She doesn’t know where she wants to go or even where she is. She’s doesn’t know Point A or Point B. Most personal training clients seek help from this place—lost and unaware.

It happened slowly. Not at first, of course; the first 10 pounds were obviously beer weight that happened at college. But all of her friends put on the same 10 pounds, so it didn’t seem so bad. Anyway, she needed new work clothes. That excuse worked for almost five years, but after five more pounds, it was wearing as thin as the denim between her thighs. She joined a gym down the street from work and told herself she’d go every day because it was convenient. The gym also conveniently renewed her membership every January, so the hit to her Visa bill was an odd reminder that she had pedaled, ellipticaled and hip-hop danced yet another pound into her jeans since the previous January. Ten years as an adult, and she was 20 pounds from freshman orientation. She tried a diet here and there. She took some weightlifting classes. She did the right things, but year after year her fat jeans kept becoming just her jeans.

Until that boy on the subway said to her, “Move it, tubby.”

Then slowly wasn’t an option.

Motivation is for Navy SEALs and marathoners. She wasn’t motivated after that subway ride; she was a fury of laser-focused rage. She filled the garbage can with ice cream, pretzels, and everything else with a carb in it. She bought a Nike Fuel Band, running shoes, a wireless scale for her bathroom and a nutritional scale for her kitchen.

And even after an hour of boot camp, she made the little red number on the elliptical go higher than she ever had seen it go. She didn’t care that she was 30 minutes late for work; this would be her life now. Sweat and hunger meant she was making progress.

A week later, her new scale had a new number. It was lower, but not as low as the sweat and hunger suggested it would be. Every muscle ached and she wanted toast. How do people do this? How do people stay angry long enough lose the weight? How do people live without ice cream and nights out? She needed help, but she didn’t even know what to ask for.

“Just tell me what to do. I don’t know where I’m going, but I know I don’t want to be here.”