Tonight I noticed a new fitness company in Vancouver promoting a boot camp program that they’re planning to launch this spring. As I was reading through the info about their boot camp, I laughed when I read the following:

What to Expect: This is not a typical boot camp that consists of excessive running [...]

Activities: On any given day, our boot camp includes a variety of activities from running [...]

Funny that they claim there’s no excessive running at their boot camp, and then give running top priority in their list of activities you’ll do at their boot camp.

For the record, there is precisely zero running at my Vancouver boot camp program.

Kettlebells are a pretty popular piece of exercise equipment, and people often ask me about them, or more specifically why I never talk about them in any of the nearly 200 fitness videos I’ve got on my YouTube channel.

The answer is simple, I don’t like kettlebells. Don’t get me wrong, they’re unquestionably an awesome piece of exercise equipment that’s sure to produce fantastic results for anyone who uses them, but I personally hate using them.

I did a “Kettlebell 101″ workout back in the summer of 2008 because I was interested in learning more about kettlebells in order to see if I could introduce them into the workouts I run for my clients in Vancouver. It was an intense workout where we ran through many of the most common kettlebell exercises. Despite the workout clearly being incredibly effective, I found the workout (i.e. exercising with kettlebells) to be a miserable experience and not something I would remotely enjoy doing again, much less on a regular basis.

I believe that exercise should be fun, and since I didn’t remotely enjoy exercising with kettlebells, I don’t exercise with them. But don’t avoid kettlebells just because I don’t like them. Maybe you’ll love them. So if you’re interested in exercising with kettlebells, I encourage you to try a kettlebell workout and then decide for yourself whether exercising with kettlebells something you enjoy and want to do on a regular basis.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you need a gym membership and/or a bunch of fancy equipment to get fit.

Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel to ensure that you won’t miss out on any of the free gymles workouts videos I’m constantly uploading.

Prior to starting my own Vancouver personal training company, I worked for several other personal training companies in Vancouver. The negative experiences I had working for those other companies was one of the driving forces behind me starting my own Vancouver personal training business.

One negative experience in particular stands out as important towards pushing me to start my own business, and shaping that business into what it has become today. The negative experience I speak of involved working for a personal training company in downtown Vancouver. The guy running the company and overseeing the team of trainers was without a doubt the most boring fitness professional I’ve ever met. He was a miserable person to be around, and his training style was “all business”. No smiles, no jokes, no fun.

Working out must be an enjoyable experience. If you don’t have fun with your workouts, and look forward to exercising, you’ll never get results.

When I started my own Vancouver personal training company, the goal has always been to make exercise fun. I go out of my way to make sure my clients enjoy and look forward to all of their workouts. By making exercise fun, your workout consistency will be higher, you will push yourself harder, and higher consistency plus increased intensity equals better and faster results.

I was looking through my Google Analytics logs tonight and I laughed when I saw that someone found my resistance bands ebook workout website via the following Google search phrase:

if i hate traveling to the gym what is the best exercise for me

Not that there’s anything wrong with that search phrase. I also hate traveling to the gym, so I completely agree with that person. I just laughed at how specific the search phrase was, and that my Mode Workouts site came up in the search results for that phrase.

The person didn’t end up buying my resistance band workout ebook, but I hope through his (or her) search efforts, he realized that resistance bands are the perfect piece of home exercise equipment if you hate traveling to the gym.

If you don’t already have a high-quality set of resistance bands, get yourself a set of  resistance bands, break free from the shackles of your local health club, and join the gymless revolution.

“High-intensity interval training is twice as effective as normal exercise,” said Jan Helgerud, an exercise expert at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “This is like finding a new pill that works twice as well. … We should immediately throw out the old way of exercising.”

Let’s face it. Chances are, you hate exercising at the gym as much as I do. The good news is that you don’t need to go to the gym to get in great shape. As a matter of fact, chances are you’ll get better results if you avoid the gym entirely. Here are 5 reasons never to go to the gym again.

1. Useless Machines. Most gyms are lined wall to wall with completely useless exercise machines that will produce almost no results for you. You’re better off doing full-body compound movements that get multiple joints and muscles working together as a functional unit. These types of exercises are not only possible to do outside of the gym, it’s preferred that you do them outside of the gym where you have more space to move around.

2. Crowds. Most gyms are a miserable place to be because they’re always so crowded. You spend more time waiting for equipment than actually exercising. You’ll be surprised how much exercise you can get done in a short 20 to 30 minute home workout when you’re not waiting for equipment.

3. Travel Time. Another big time-waster about gyms is the time you spend traveling to and from the gym. It’s possible to have an intense and effective full-body workout at home with minimal equipment in the same amount of time it takes most people just to drive to their local health club.

4. Cost. With one month’s worth of the money you’re currently spending on a health club membership, you can buy an awesome set of resistance bands that you can use at home or anywhere for intense full-body fat-burning workouts. And then each month going forward, you’ll be saving lots of money by not having that costly gym membership burning a hole in your wallet.

5. Results. Practically no one who exercises at traditional gyms and health clubs actually sees any results from the time they spend in the gym. From the useless machines, to the crowds, to the lack of any idea what you’re supposed to be doing at the gym, the average person exercising at a health club never gets any results. You’ll be better off picking up a few pieces of inexpensive portable exercise equipment, and following along with my home workouts, such as my 10-Minute Home Workout Without Weights:

Visit my YouTube channel for more outdoor workout videos.

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I received the following question today via my YouTube channel:

Do you have or can you make female specific videos?

My answer:

Practically all of my videos are made for both males and females. 99% of my customers in Vancouver are female. Contrary to popular belief, women shouldn’t exercise any differently than men. Whether your goals are fat-burning (as is the case with 99% of my customers in Vancouver), or muscle-building, the workouts are the same for men and women.

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