Sal Di Stefano - The Resistance Training Revolution

I was shocked when I read this statistic from a recent large study: 60 percent of American adults are not doing the one activity that can most effectively save them from obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, chronic pain, premature aging, depression, anxiety, and life-crushing illnesses. They are not doing the one activity that best assures them an attractive, fit body and a happy, healthful, and youthful life.

That one activity is resistance training, a system of muscle-strengthening exercises and techniques.

Why arent people taking advantage of resistance training and all it offers? The researchers hit the nail on the head and drove it down deep with one big whack: resistance training has not been as widely promoted by health professionals as cardio exercise.

As a result, people are pounding away on pavements or treadmills, bouncing around in aerobics classes, taking tons of steps on stair climbers. Yet, they are not losing weight but are actually gaining it, along with sore joints, bad knees, fatigue, and other proven casualties of cardio.

Yes, this is all totally true. Focusing on cardiovascular activity for fat loss is a fantastic way to fail at fat loss and other health goals.

This is an important message that I will expand on in this book because Im passionate about getting it across to everyone in the world.

The seeds of that passion were planted a long time ago when I was a skinny, painfully insecure teenager. At age fourteen, all this changed after I picked up my first weight. And I never stopped. I learned how to build strength and develop muscle, completely reinventing myself, inside and out.

As a teen growing up in the 90s, the biggest source of my information on resistance training came from the bodybuilding magazines. I studied these sources carefully and applied their advice religiously to try to build a strong and fit physique. I took this information as truth because it was considered common knowledge in the publications I was reading, and I never questioned it. Common knowledge is information believed to be so true and accurate that no one ever considers challenging it.

In my late teens, I walked into a local 24 Hour Fitness gym and applied to be a personal trainer. I was hired and did pretty well. Then, at only age twenty, I was promoted to general manager with as many as forty employees working for me. A few years later, I opened a wellness and fitness facility that offered one-on-one training, massage therapy, nutritional counseling, hormone testing, and acupuncture.

The vast majority of the clients I have trained over the last twenty-three years were everyday average people who were not interested in building massive bulging muscles; rather, they wanted to get leaner, fitter, and more mobile, and wanted generally better overall health.

One day, a client asked me: What percentage of the people you train achieve fitness success?

Most of them, I said.

To which she replied: All of them got fit and healthy from then on? No one fell off?

That conversation got me thinking. I could help get people into shape, but helping them stay in shape was a different story. Most of my past clients could not maintain good fitness. My training approach had been ineffective. I had failed as a trainer.

From that point forward, I began to question all the so-called common knowledge I had previously believed to be true. Americans dont have a weight-loss problem. They collectively lose millions of pounds every year. They have a problem