Parrillo Certified Personal Training Structuring the weekly training template In this day and age, TIME is our most precious commodity

by Duke Nukem

Typically, the first question a new client asks of a Parrillo Certified Personal Trainers is, “How do I fit in training when I am working long hours and have lots of outside responsibilities and commitments? I can’t spend two hours a day in the gym.” Any Parrillo Certified Personal Trainer (PCPT) will be quick to point out transformative fitness does not need to take a lot of time if the time spent is well spent. In Parrillo World, when we train, we train all out: cardio and weight training are done with gut-busting intensity. Better to spend thirty minutes using blistering intensity than to pretend train for two hours, engaging in halfhearted training, interspersed with lots of socializing and talking with other gym members. If you work hard and work smart you can get by with way less, particularly if you make it a point to not socialize during workouts. As one fabled IFBB professional once noted, “When I train, I feel as if I am in a battle with my own body. I am not at the gym to hit on women or shuck and jive with the other fellows. I might say a few words to my training partner about how I want him to spot me on the next set. Other than that, don’t come over and try and strike up a conversation with me while I’m training. You’ll get the cold shoulder. If you want to talk with me save it for after the workout.” In every single workout maintain tight concentration and become completely focused; that way you’ll get the most return for your time investment.

When it comes to obtaining real results, the Parrillo Certified Personal Trainer trumps the run-of-the-mill personal trainer you’ll encounter at the local fitness facility, gym, club or spa every single time. 99% of all personal trainers only know one way to train. You could fit their nutritional knowledge on the head of a pin. The average personal trainer insists that you train their particular way – not because his or her strategy is all that sensational, factually this is the only way they know. You are the square peg being jammed into a round hole. Any PCPT is ready, willing and completely able to select from a dozen different customized training templates. PCPT will customize a training strategy for every single client. The idea behind Parrillo-style weight training and cardio is to make maximum use of the available training time – no matter how limited or sporadic that might be. Parrillo Certified Personal Trainers have umpteen training strategies all right at their fingertips and all equally effective. A PCPT will quiz you about your work schedule and effortlessly constructs a training template that meshes perfectly with your lifestyle. How best to deliver the most results for the least amount of time investment? Subject yourself to the most grueling, intense and effective weight training and cardio sessions of your entire life. Intense training is result producing training. If you train hard and if you train intense, you don’t necessarily need overly long workout sessions. Those employing the services of a PCPT can expect to see dramatic physical improvement by the end of the first month.

How do we manipulate ordinary circumstance to obtain extraordinary results? Here is a true tale based on the true story of a Parrillo Performance Press reader and his dramatic transformation working under a Parrillo Certified Personal Trainer…

Ron is a real estate agent working in a down economy; he manages a branch office for a national real estate firm and has a work schedule that requires him to put in 50+ hours per week. He starts his workday at 9am and most days he heads home at 7pm. He works a half day on Saturday and has a wife and two teenage boys that need attending to. Over the past ten years Ron had packed on a ton of bodyweight and he weighed 240 pounds standing six foot. The former star football halfback looked like an out-of-shape nose-guard. He was worried that the combination of job stress and fast food was going to give him a heart attack by age 50. Determined to ‘stem the tide’ Ron engaged the services of a local PCPT. Ron was spurred into action when he saw the fantastic physical transition a friend of his underwent working with a Parrillo Certified Personal Trainer. His friend was a settlement lawyer and shed 70 pounds in a year. Ron quizzed his attorney pal on how he’d managed to make such an incredible physical transition. He discovered that the amazing makeover was overseen by a Parrillo Certified Personal Trainer. Introductions were made and Ron met Phil, a longtime PCPT. Phil had a no BS approach that Ron related to. Ron agreed to commit to a 12 week program that included weight training three times a week and cardio five days a week – all done in the morning before work. In addition, Phil had Ron adopt the Parrillo Nutrition Program, complete with supplementation and weekly BodyStat body composition testing.

Both men agreed that the only way Ron could fit training into his hectic work schedule was for Ron to wake up early and train before work. Monday thru Friday Ron awoke at 5 am and headed to a local fitness facility on his way into work. For the first four weeks Phil had Ron on a “shape-up” routine. This was designed to get Ron back into some semblance of basic physical condition without killing him in the process. Cardio was done five times a week and in each successive session, Phil asked Ron to go a little faster. Each successive weight training session, Phil had Ron lift a little bit heavier or squeeze out a few extra reps in each exercise. Each successive week Phil had Ron clean up and tighten up his eating. At the conclusion of each training week, Phil gave Ron a Parrillo BodyStat test; he used skin-fold calipers to determine changes in Ron’s body composition. By the end of the first month Ron had shed 11 pounds of fat and added 3 pounds of muscle. He was now ready to swing into the second month. “You are in good basic shape, now you have a handle on the basic eating and supplementation template and now we can start the real work!” Phil said as he laid out the training template for month two and three. The key to “fitting everything in” was to get it done before he started his workday. Now instead of dragging into work and having to drink four cups of coffee to get the day started, he burst through the door fired up from his just-finished training. He tackled the workday with gusto. Here is how Ron’s 2^nd and 3^rd month training template was constructed (see below). He weight trained and performed cardio five times weekly.

Parrillo-style cardio: Ron left home dressed for the gym. He carried with him his business suit which he stashed in a gym locker. At 6:30 every morning Ron mounted a cardio machine and began a brisk 5 minute warm up. He would then gradually increase the pace and before long he broke into a terrific, toxin-expelling sweat. “If you ain’t sweating, if you ain’t huffing and puffing,” Phil would continually remind him, “Then you ain’t working hard enough to burn off fat and spike the metabolism.” Ron was a Type-A personality and he found that he had an ability to push himself in the gym. Ron also bored easily. He found that one way to keep his interest peaked on cardio was to jump from one machine to another, alternating machines every quarter hour. After 15 torrid minutes on the elliptical machine, Ron might leap onto the Step Mill. This gruesome device was tough and he labeled it, “Pure hell.” After the Step Mill, Ron would shift to the relative ease of a stationary bike and attempt to keep the intense pace up for the final fifteen minutes. Phil showed Ron how to cruise along right below his oxygen debt threshold. Done, Ron would jump off the bike, change out of his sweat-drenched t-shirt into a dry one and down a double chocolate 50/50 Plus™ shake. Now it was time to weight train!

Parrillo-style weight training: “The key to result-producing weight training is finding some manner or fashion to equal or exceed capacity in each and every session,” Phil told Ron repeatedly. While Phil did not expect Ron to exceed his personal best in every lift in every session, he did expect him to work up to (and past) his capacity – even if his capacity was diminished. “While you cannot be expected to exceed all-time best lifts in every single session, you can still get a result-producing workout,” Phil explained. “You might show up today and be a bit off, for whatever reason; perhaps on an off day you lose 10% in your exercise capacity…that’s okay…we work to equal or exceed those reduced capacities.” Phil was real big on forced reps and whenever he was around he would assist Ron in performing forced rep sets on whatever body part Ron was working on. Phil showed Ron how to use drop sets to “goose the training intensity.” Phil called drop sets “forced reps without a training partner.” If, for example, Ron was performing the overhead dumbbell press, on his final set he would finish off using the drop set strategy: he would work up to a pair of 50 pound dumbbells for a top set of 5 reps. The instant he finished the 5^th and final rep Ron would replace the 50s and immediately grab a pair of 40 pound dumbbells and again “rep-out,” pushing the 40s for as many reps as possible…he would replace the 40s and immediately grab a pair of 30 pound dumbbells and do a final all-out drop-set rep-out. This excruciating strategy was used on curls, tricep pushdowns, lateral raises, pec dec, seated machine bench presses, leg extensions and leg curls. Within three months Ron had doubled his strength in every exercise. His formerly flaccid physique developed a visible thickness and hardness. With each successive session he grew stronger, more muscular and leaner. Friends, relatives and coworkers were amazed.

The final piece of the puzzle: Phil completely revamped Ron’s nutrition. Phil taught Ron how to prepare massive amounts of “acceptable and approved” bodybuilding foods ahead of time. Sunday afternoons were used to grill chicken and turkey; he learned how to create steamed vegetable concoctions and prepare brown rice and potatoes for consumption during the week. Ron would cart his prepared bodybuilding meals to work and heat them up in the office microwave. His multiple-meal eating schedule was “straight Parrillo.” (see chart below)

To Ron’s everlasting credit, for three straight months he never missed a workout, never missed a Parrillo Meal and he took his supplements faithfully. His reward was an astounding transformation. In only 90 short days Ron had gone from stressed-out, fat and unfit into lean, trim, strong and vibrant: he looked, felt and acted 10 years younger and his pant size went from 38 down to size 32. His bodyweight plummeted from 238 to 204. His shirt size went up from 44 to 48. His bench press went from an awkward 135 for four reps to 225 for one and 205 x 5. Best of all he felt healthy; more than just feeling healthy, his blood pressure dropped, his cholesterol dropped, his stress levels dropped and his resting heart rate dropped. His progress was so staggering that his wife Denise started training with him. She had ballooned up to 150 pounds and after seeing her husband’s radical progress she wanted in. “I can’t believe you eat all that food and still lose weight,” she said repeatedly. Denise morphed from a naysayer into a cheerleader and finally a participant. One night after a killer weekend workout they had taken together, they talked over grilled salmon, fresh asparagus, spinach, potatoes roasted with butter-flavored CapTri® and Parrillo Ice Kreem™. Denise shed 10 pounds in her first month. She looked at her lean and taunt husband and said, “Who knew fitness could be so fun and dieting could be so delicious!” Ron just smiled and silently thanked his lucky stars he’d crossed paths with a Parrillo Certified Personal Trainer.

To locate a Parrillo Certified Personal Trainer in your area, call us at 1-800-344-3404