If you’ve followed my work for any length of time, you probably know how I feel about the scale.

That opinion was largely developed from my first six months of working at a training gym, where a scale innocently sat in the corner of the bathroom.

We used the scale, along with a handheld device to measure body fat, as a way to help clients get a baseline of metrics for when they started with us.

But what I was seeing on a daily basis wasn’t people using the scale as a starting point to gauge progress. I started to see clients coming in, looking defeated. When I inquired further, I found that when they went in to the bathroom to change for the workout, they’d hop on the scale.

Because it was there.

And if the scale didn’t reflect the change their brains felt it should, based on the effort they were putting in, they were walking in for a workout wondering why they should even bother.

So that’s when I took the scale out of the bathroom and ran it over with my car, and took a sledge hammer to it.

What can I say? I had feelings.

But over the years, I’ve evolved a bit.

If there is one thing that I’ve come around to in my time as a trainer, it’s the understanding that people need a way to gauge progress on this journey. Without it, staying the course can become incredibly difficult. There is a part of our brain called the ventral striatum that kicks in during decision-making to weigh the costs versus the benefits of our physical efforts.

I'm going to re-name this part of our brain Judge Judy. We'll just call her Judy for short.

According to research from Emory University, Judy weighs in on three phases of effort-based decision-making — the anticipation of initiating an effort, the actual execution of the effort and the reward, or outcome, of the effort.

Have you ever started...well....anything and decided it wasn't worth the effort? Recently I did a Facebook post asking where people get stuck in the process. And here is one of the answers:

If this sounds familiar to you, it's not your fault. It's Judy's fault (with apologies to everyone on this list name Judy....)

So how do you get around Judy?

Going back to my comment on measuring progress, this is where I think it's incredibly helpful to differentiate between process goals and outcome goals. Losing weight is an outcome goal. Dropping two pant sizes is an outcome goal.

Making a commitment to walk 7,000 steps at least five days a week is a process goal. Going to the gym twice a week is a process goal. You have complete control (for the most part), over whether or not your process goals happen.

But if your goal is to lose 10lbs in a month, you have less control over whether or not that happens. Sleep, stress, and hormones, just to name a few, can have a dramatic effect on whether or not you lose those 10lbs. So even if you follow a nutrition plan to the letter, you might not hit that goal.

And that's when Judy's all like "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY I WILL NOT EAT ANOTHER PACKAGE OF TUNA DUMPED IN COTTAGE CHEESE!"

I mean, that combination of food might gross you out just thinking about it, but it is jam-packed with protein.

In order to get around Judy, you need to trick her by changing the way you measure progress. So I highly encourage you to not only choose some process goals, but find a way to track that process. In order to hard wire a habit, our brains need a little hit of dopamine. That's where habit trackers can be helpful.

If you decide to set a step goal, perhaps your tracker is your watch. My Garmin First Avenger watch buzzes and gives me a giant Captain America sign when I hit my step goal, my weekly activity goal (minutes of activity), and as ridiculous as it sounds, I love getting my shout outs from the Captain.

I have my clients track their workouts through an app - they track everything, from walking, to stretching, to hitting their water goals. Sometimes just being able to check a box is all you need. Another popular habit tracker is the Jerry Seinfeld "don't break the chain" technique, of printing out a blank calendar and making an "X" every time you do your habit.

Whatever your technique is, just realize that it's not your fault if you hit a wall with progress and find it difficult to continue.

It's Judy's.

You're welcome.

On an almost weekly basis, I hear clients or strangers at dinner parties make the following statement:

I mean I can’t even do a push up. Or a pull up!

They’re often surprised at my response.

It took me a year to work my way up to a push up from the floor, and I can’t do a pull up….yet. (Keep that mind open.)

Yesterday I put up a social media post about push ups - and one of the comments I received was perhaps the most telling:

"I hate push ups....they make me feel so defeated."

I’m not exactly sure why so many people, women in particular, use those two exercises as the gold standard of fitness, but I’m going to blame it on Dwight Eisenhower, and his implementation of the holy terror that was known as the President’s Physical Fitness test.

My memories of this torturous misery largely revolve around trying to run a mile in jeans when I was eight years old. (Chaffing. So. Much. Chaffing.)

There was also the goal of climbing a rope without using your legs.

As an athletic kid, I learned two important lessons from this challenge - running was God’s punishment for not listening to my mother and I didn’t know much about Ronald Reagan, but hated him for making me do distinctly not fun things in gym class.

While doing push ups wasn’t part of the President’s challenge, it was still a measure of fitness prescribed to many of us by well-intended coaches and gym teachers. I remember my college lacrosse coach telling us to do 25 push ups at the end of many sprints - and there I’d be trying my damndest to do some measure of push ups from my knees and wishing that we could just switch to the 50 sit ups already.

Between these coaches and the media’s portrayal of the push ups in many sports movies (Remember Rocky doing one armed push ups??) we are mostly made to feel that an inability to perform a push up from the floor means that we’re weak.

When really it means that we are just human.

That's because, according to MRI's, females have 40% less upper body mass than men. So yeah, not many females are going to just drop to the floor and bang out 25 push ups, despite our experiences with gym class and even some sport preparation.

Now don’t get me wrong, if you are looking for a performance goal to strive for - the push up is an incredible place to start. The exericse requires core strength and can help improve muscular endurance with the upper body. But what nobody tells us, is that being able to perform a push up with proper depth and proper form takes time and hard work. And a lot of both.

So how can you train your way to a proper push ups?

Check back for part II and I’ll give you a couple of exercises to help you build towards that goal.

Do you want a nicer butt?

No, not like a friendlier butt, but..let’s say…a stronger butt?

Sure you do, even if you don’t know it.

Aesthetic qualities aside, strong glutes and hamstrings can help improve posture, alleviate lower back, hip and knee pain, and, perhaps most importantly, can take your Pickle Ball game to the next level.

Boom.

And if I had to choose one exercise that almost everyone can benefit, it would be the single leg Romanian deadlift - or - in technical terms, the Drinky Bird.

This guy does a single leg deadlift flawlessly.

First of all, the Drinky Bird is a unilateral exercise (one leg at a time), and there is a ton of benefit for including single leg work in your workouts.

Walking, running, and taking the stairs all require single leg movements, so aside from training your posterior chain (back of your body), single leg work is also very functional. Training one leg at a time can also help us address movement and muscle imbalances, which can sometimes lead to poor compensation patterns.

The trouble for many clients though, is that single leg work can often be irritating on the knee. While split squats, lunges, and step ups might aggravate an already grumpy knee, the Drinky Bird requires only a slight softening of the knee, so even people with chronic knee pain or discomfort can perform some variation of the movement.

This exercise also gives you a lot of bang for your buck, as it is a full body movement that makes your obliques (part of the core) work very hard as well. I’ve never met anyone who couldn’t benefit from more core work, especially core stabilization (think plank versus sit up).

And lastly, though I could go on and on, the Drinky Bird forces you to work on balance. When you try this exercise for the first time, you’ll want to hold on to a bench or a squat rack - and don’t be surprised to find that one leg feels more stable than the other. That’s part of the imbalance that you’re working on with this exercise.

Ready to give it a shot? Ok - here is a variation to get you going - it’s called a braced SLDL.

In this variation, here are a few cues to get you started:

• Squeeze your armpits hard enough to hold a piece of paper in them - this will keep you from rounding your shoulders.

• Maintain a flat back - you don’t want to round through your lower spine.

• Engage the core. Suck that belly button towards your spine and keep it there.

• Allow soft knees. While this exercise is a hip hinge (movement initiated through the hips), it’s okay to bend the knees a bit.

• Press the knuckle of your big toe into the floor to help use the muscles in your feet - which will help you maintain balance.

• You may want to perform this exercise in a minimalist shoe or even barefoot. If you are working out in a thick soled running shoe, you might find yourself struggling against the shoe as you try to maintain balance.

In many cases, clients find it a struggle to maintain a straight lower back and straight leg throughout the movement. If you want to be sure that you are performing the exercise correctly, adding a foam roller can help keep your form in check:

And finally, if the above two versions are too easy for you, check out this variation that I picked up from my co-worker Trent last week.

The pause at the bottom really forced my hamstrings to work harder, and I found that I was able to keep both hips square to the ground. And the next day, but but and my hamstrings were fried, but you know, in a good way.

Cheers.