Okay, we’re back for Part III of “My 10 Biggest Lessons From My Years of Coaching.”!

So, quick recap. In Parts I & II, I covered my first eight lessons.

1. Make Staying Safe and Avoiding Injury Your #1 Priority.

2. To Build a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body, Regardless of Age, You Need to Resistance Train at Least Twice a Week.

3. To Progress you Must Consistently Increase the Difficulty of your Workouts.

4. Building a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body Takes a Long Time… And Is Hard.

5. You Have to Maintain What You’ve Built

6. Eat An Absolute Ton of Vegetables

7. Weight is Lost in The Kitchen and The Table, Not in The Gym.

8. No All or Nothing Attitude.

Today I’ll be finishing up by adding in my final two big lessons. Okay, let’s get in this!

Lesson 9: Foam Roll, Foam Roll, Foam Roll!

When it comes to reducing chronic joint pain and restoring healthy movement, the foam roller needs to become your best friend. Name yours, take it out to dinner with you, whatever. Just do whatever you need to do to develop a close relationship with it. Then use your foam roller as often as possible.Foam rolling (or using another type of firm apparatus to apply pressure to your muscles) is key for releasing tight bundles of muscle. These tight bundles of muscle, known as trigger points, are themselves painful and can seriously restrict movement in and around joints.

For instance, you can dramatically reduce shoulder pain and improve shoulder mobility by foam rolling your lat muscles, chest, and front shoulder muscles. You can dramatically reduce back pain and improve spine mobility by foam rolling the muscles that run up and down your spine. And you can dramatically reduce hip and lower back pain and improve hip mobility by foam rolling the front, inside, and back of your legs and your butt muscles. (These are just three of the many types of pain and mobility restrictions you can address by foam rolling.)

Lesson 10: Consistency Is Key

Two weeks ago, in lesson number eight, I talked about the all or nothing attitude and how it is a killer of long-term progress. Piggy backing on that point, at the end of the day nothing matters if you aren’t consistent. Nothing.You know the old saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” right? Well, the addendum to that saying is, “but they were laying bricks every day.”

What I’m getting at here, is that far more important than periods of hardcore training and perfect eating is staying consistent over the long run. Every repetition of every exercise in every workout adds up.

So much of building a lean, strong, healthy body starts with just showing up and getting started. Often time’s it’s not fun. You won’t feel “inspired.” And you may very well feel like, “man, the gym is the last place I want to be right now.”

We hear you, and you know what? It’s cool… as long as you actually do your workout ☺

Keep plugging away, stay consistent, and let the gains add up one workout at a time. That is how you build a lean, strong, healthy body.

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Okay everyone, that’s it! My 10 Biggest Lessons From My Years of Coaching.

Now get out there, apply these, and get to it!

Zach

Founder & Director of Zach Moore Training

Your Exercise & Dietary Management Team.