Author: Will Heffernan

What are the best fitness, training and or health podcasts out there and why do you like them?

I can see that there are about 47 of you having a peek when I post and you are all either Australia, Ireland or US based…and I am assuming from this that you all have a connection with Informed Performance in one way or another so if you can be bothered…either email me or leave a comment here.

I want to know what I am missing out on and have some time now morning and evening where I would like to immerse myself back in the community/industry that I used to be a part of and would like not to be discouraged right from the get go because if you do know me I know that you’ll know how annoyed I get and how fast that annoyance shows through.

I would also be interested to hear how you consume your fitness, training and or health info? Does anyone actually read anymore? I ask because I sure don’t.

I am thinking that now that I have finally finished editing and organising all my old blog posts and articles that I might just leave them where they are and instead go back to making videos on the topics covered in the posts/articles and just post them instead with a little explainer accompanying them….either way there is movement a foot.

Please email me or comment here and let me know your thoughts and feelings on the any or all of the subjects raised above.

So as usual and as always…it looks like absolutely nothing is going on and as usual and as always you’d be half wrong…I say that because I never want to admit anyone else is right. Over the past couple of months I have been busy moving house for what I hope is the last time in a long time and settling into a new routine. I have still been investing a little time in the website but mainly it’s behind the scenes. Going forward though I hope that you’ll see that it will pay off in terms of content.

Why? Why? Why? I get asked this question a lot and I get asked it for lots of different reasons. I will tell you some of the ‘why’ questions and hopefully some answers.

Why do you bother with this fitness and training thing? Well in truth it’s because I have always been interested in it since I was 13 and started Orienteering and running cross country. I was a fat little kid and when I got involved in Orienteering and started training and getting coached I always wanted to know why I was doing what I was doing and that continued on through my own sporting career in its various guises and iterations and obviously through my professional career as a coach and trainer. So I have always studied and always asked questions and have always searched for answers. It has continued to the extent that even though my current career has taken me down a completely different path I am still studying in the field of sport, exercise and health science at university right now because I have always been interested in knowing why just for my own sake and have kept my finger in the pie at various universities as I still do to this day…because I just gots to know. I have always wanted to know why what works works. Sport Science as a field is really a study of the science of training history. Nothing happens the way it appears to happen….nothing is discovered in the lab and then is brought onto the sporting field. Coaches and trainers are always following their hunches and trying new things….some things work and some things don’t. When they work and work well….as usual and and always that information leaks out into the elite/professional via athletes moving teams/clubs or coaching staff doing the same and other people try it and modify it and improve it and eventually it becomes such common practice that some nerd in a university hears about it and takes it into a lab and studies it….sometimes well and sometimes poorly (that’s another story) and then eventually the results of that study get out into the general community and we hear about a scientific breakthrough and you see people in gyms doing it. That transition from elite sports practice to sports science to the community used to take decades but with the speed of information travel now it only takes years. I love being able to stick my nose in and getting to have a peak at what is going on in the lab as well as seeing what is happening on the field…it is a huge privilege. So based on past experience I am going to be interested in fitness, exercise and health until I die though the lack of one or all of those. Till then I will always want to share what I know.

Why are you bothering with a website? Good question. What I really want to try to with this website is just have a place to organise all my information. I think what I did during my career was pretty unique and I am proud of my body of work. I developed a template and a training system that was being applied to housewives looking to get back into shape after a baby, to professional athletes earning an income from competing in their sports of choice and Olympians competing at the highest level in multiple sporting disciplines and everyone in between. They were all training sometimes side by side and using exactly the same training template and the same training philosophy to achieve their own results. I think that’s unique. So I want to get this website to a place where I can share that template and philosophy with everyone and for it to be clear to see and understand….and if it isn’t…then I want to make it clear to see and to understand for everyone. So that is what this website is about.

I thought I would kick off the month with a lame title just to lower everyone’s expectations right from the get go.

I want to be able to cater to my 2 followers as best as possible and to that end I thought I would give you a bit of an update.

In no particular order:

1. I have taken all my previous articles, blog posts and the like and put them all here in the background.
2. I have categorised all my old videos…the instructional ones showing how to do ‘things’ and the rambling ones…where I talk about how and why you should do things.
3. I have been reading lots of business books and books on building online businesses because really I think where I have let myself down in the past is in the business, sales, marketing and advertising area…and that’s for a number of reasons a) because I spent most of my career getting paid by the same organisation that was paying the athletes I was coaching so I never had to be commercial and b) because I can be somewhat abrasive.
4. I have been talking to lots of people about coaching and training and about what I could or should be doing going forward.

So…my thoughts are as follows:

1. Even though it won’t look and feel great I will focus on building my body of work here. In that as the titles about point out…I will lay out my thoughts and philosophy with regards fitness, fighting and well being. Primarily that will be essentially me laying out both for those that have been exposed to it and for those that are new to it ‘the IP way’ from the ground up. How you apply the IP template and methodology to fitness, health and fighting.
2. Then I am going to make some videos that cover off on those topics. I am going to do that because it’s the way I tend to consume this info these days. I am also contemplating if I do it as a podcast perhaps as well. The reason being because I think people get a lot more out of me when they present me with something that I think is dumb or force me to defend or proselytize. Do so in a way that takes anyone listening/watching from the ground up. I was thinking that going into how the IP template developed might also help people get on board.
   
   So points 1 and 2 are really about bringing everyone up to speed on the IP template and how I implement it and my thoughts around fitness, health and wellbeing. Basically having a resource.
3. This brings us to what is next after that.
   1. I have always wanted to have a place for people who use the IP template to log their training and getting advice and help and am considering throwing some $$$’s at doing as much just because I can. I would like to do it in such a way that people can record their fitness testing…as you all know…if you aren’t assessing you’re guessing. They can choose a template that suits their needs and then log their training on an ongoing basis and people can chime in and give them advice.
   2. I would like to be able to collect articles that are IP approved…stuff that I like and be able to post links. To do the same with products….there is stuff that I use that I think others would find valuable if they need them for the same reason….and post those links so people can buy them and so the site can get a commission and help pay it’s way.
   3. I am toying with the idea of writing an IP manual and running an IP course. I know there are thousands of courses out there but I think it might be worthwhile having an IP credential….basically a chance for me to say here is everything I’ve learned and here is what I know works and establishing a bar. The reason I like this idea is because it was something I was contemplating right before IP came to an end and I took a different direction. Basically write a manual and develop a weekend long course and then find hotels/venues where we can get together Friday night and eat, drink, be merry and then learn and test on a Saturday morning. Analyse the results. Learn how the template works and how it’s applied. Then Saturday night eat, drink and be merry and Sunday do some more learning around rehab, pre hab, mobility and stability before all going our separate ways…do it in Las Vegas, Dublin, Melbourne or wherever we get 15-20 people interested….anyway…I think it would be awesome…it would give me a chance to show people what I am on about and why I am right 🙂
   4. Be able to offer regular folks a chance to get IP help…in that build and offering where peeps that have IP qual and understanding can get paid to offer help to regular people looking for coaching and results. I still help a lot of coaches now but I think that having a platform where a regular person can come and learn about the hows and whys of training and if they are interested pay to get a IP qualified coach to assist them a little or a lot through the site would be great and I can spend my time coaching coaches rather that regular people….which is what I enjoy most.

Those are my thoughts on this 1st of March. I am going to commit to publishing something on the 1st of the month…as I have here and we’ll see where we end up. I would love to hear your thoughts? Feel free to leave a comment.

*Some notes for this page…if you see typos that make me look like an idiot…email me and tell me or leave a comment that I can act upon and delete. If you have suggestions about what would make things easier…tell me and maybe I will act on it or maybe think you are an idiot and ignore you.

This website is one that I am taking a very long term approach to…I would like this website to look and feel as it should in maybe a years time…maybe it will take 18 months….on maybe it will take 3 months….that will depend on the people who visit and can be bothered commenting and how jazzed I get about getting things off my chest. The point being that down the track…this plea for help will be gone and no one will know that you helped get the place to where it will be when ‘they’ turn up…so let me know what you think.

Good question what is the point. This is where you guys get a peek into the chaos that is my mind.

What I am going to do here is several things simultaneously.

1. I need an outlet…I see and hear too much crazy stuff on the interwebs now. As some of you know….lets say those of you that have known me for a decade plus….I used to be quite outspoken in…lets just call it the health and fitness community both openly and behind closed doors…and I miss that.
2. I need to get myself back into shape…not only have I taken a break from coaching professionally for the last 7 years plus I think I have trained a total of 7 times in the same period.
3. I want to help other people get fit for a purpose….mainly for better health and in the hope to enjoy a better life.
4. I want to discuss the environment I am in, what’s influencing me and just other general stuff like my old blog.

So with regards point one…when I see stuff that is idiotic I might mention it and tell you why I personally think it’s dumb. I will tell you what I am not going to do though…I am not going to include references or links or ‘proof’…I used to do that…it took a huge amount of time and it only ‘worked’ on a small amount of people in that…only a tiny fraction of people seem to be convinced by evidence…if I tell you something you will either agree with me because you know I won’t lie to you and you know that what I have to say to you has been filtered through 20 years of experience or you prefer to believe whatever rubbish you have in your head….and a tiny fraction will be brought back from the darkside and into the light.

On point two…I think I have to practice what I preach…in that it’s a cop out for me to say trust me and to still be a fat crippled mess. So I am going to get back into shape…a shape that isn’t so round. The thing is I am going to do it in a normal non idiotic way that anyone can do….because if I don’t then what’s the point. I am going to do a totally non bullshit transformation in that yes, I will do some before and after shot…but the before shots won’t involve terrible lighting and me sticking my gut out…then an after shot where I get a tan and a haircut and suck my gut in and have professional lighting. We will talk more about this.

This brings us to point number three…there are still people I help…and I’ll continue to do this with a view to getting back to doing it semi professionally…and no, that doesn’t mean that I will do a half arsed job of it…it means that I will make some time available to do a professional job.

On the last point…I have been studying permaculture and as with most forms of study and research my experience of permaculture has been influenced and effected by what I brought to it…but it has also had and influence on me and my thoughts about coaching, training, health and life in general and I want to share and explore that as well.

So that is the brief intro…let me give you a bit of a timeline…I have spent a few $$$’s in setting up this site…because I can and I want to…I think long term…I’ll end up spending more…again…because I can and will want to. A lot of that will involve the interplay between me and you…and want you want and what I want to do. I was watching a podcast…it might have been an Joe Rogan Experience one and he was talking to a comedian…I can’t even remember who it was….but something they said really struck me and pretty much set me on this course. I won’t bore you with the whole story and my partial memory of it…instead I will tell you what I got out of it…the dude was working away trying to be a comic…he was doing so remarkably unsuccessfully to the point that he was about to give the whole thing away after struggling for years….so as a final ‘Fuck You All’ to everyone he wrote a show that was just about him and was completely done to please him…his thought being…this was all a failure..his career that is…so before he left he’d just just everything off his chest and just do the stuff that made him laugh. Well it was a huge success. Actually now that I think of it…it was Bert Kreischer podcast. So anyway…what I decided was that instead of trying to make a website for others….I would make it for me…instead of trying to come up with a company name I could market…I would just make it about me….instead of coming up with a way to commercialise it…I’d just do it. This website is just going to be about me and what I want…as in what sort of training I’d like to do….the sort of diet and nutritional advice that I think is good….what health regimes will make me fitter and healthier. So I am going to set myself a goal of trying to organise and structure this website to make it easy to navigate and find stuff. In May I will start producing new content with regards my training, diet and health and start documenting what’s happening….as well as writing on all the other stuff mentioned earlier.

So now I want feedback. I am thinking of under promising and over delivering for a change…in that rather than publish daily as I did in the past…that instead I might do it monthly to begin with…as in get stuff done and then publish it all on the July 1st so all of May and June will be there to see? I could publish weekly maybe….and if I do what’s a good day for people….Monday morning so you can avoid work and read stuff while you have your coffee before getting into work mode? Friday arvo so you have stuff to read over the weekend? You tell me. I am also going to mess around with videos…I am thinking the discipline of Instagram and 60 seconds or less might be good? I need to have a think about this. So if you have read this far and can be bothered tell me what you think?

The Plan
So…in May and June what I am going to do is actually train…I know that will come as a surprise to many…including myself…what I want to try and do is to get fit and healthy…and do it in a way that ANYONE can do.

So how am I going to do it….I hear you ask….well what I am not going to do is anything extreme….because I hate that shit. I have pretty much steered clear of social media except for bookface for pretty much ever…in the last year however I have been doing more reading and research on the web, twitter, instagram and and bookface and what I have found has been pretty much a complete dumpster fire. The only training stuff I see is pretty much idiotic…in that it is just show boating stuff that you have to go out of your way to ‘make up’ it isn’t training…it’s a fitness/training exhibition event. No one wants to watch someone doing ‘real’ training…well thought out and planned exercise that’s executed well because it’s boring….but it’s also what was required to get people to a place where they can make a stupid instragram post of them doing battle ropes while balancing a kettlebell on their head over the side of a cliff at sunset. So what I am going to do is write a program for myself for the month of May and June and then execute it. I am going to do nothing with my diet, make no changes to my work and lifestyle in any way….the only change will be my program. I am going to write more about this…like I said in the intro I am a bit pent up. I will do some measuring and assessing…I’ve FitBit scales so I will use those. I will take some pics/vids so we can see if there are any visually discernible changes and take some girth measurements…if there is anything else that anyone can think of then let me know? Then at the end of the month we’ll see where we are at…I’ll tweak or start all over again with the program and then in July I am going to modify my diet…I’ll do this once I have my training dialled in. I think one of the most common fitness and health mistakes that people make is that 1. They change everything. 2. They change everything immediately. I am not going to do that…I am going to do things piece by piece month by month…I think that for me as a client….what I need to do is get moving….then fix/improve my nutrition and then after I have go my exercise and nutrition sorted I am going to get some proper advice on my supplements with a view to improving my health. The reason I am doing it this way is because I want to see what has an effect and look to measure it in some way…I am in no hurry…I will get each piece in place and I want to show people how easy and or how hard it is….so lets see 🙂