It’s that time again – time to make resolutions that you’ll keep diligently for a month (or two) before sliding back into your bad habits.

And also time for dozens upon dozens of fitness blogs and articles about making your resolutions stick.

Are you like most people who start off strong and hit the gym and diet 110% after January 1st? Do you fizzle out after a month or two and return to your old (bad) habits?

Let me save you some time and boil it all down for you:

Max Power Rules for Keeping New Year’s Resolutions

1. Set a small goal.
2. Start slow and steady.
3. Get it done.
4. Never never never never give up.
5. Repeat.

Training Is a Process

It is a constant and never-ending process. (See #4 and #5 above.)

Let’s be real – most people don’t like change. Your body especially doesn’t like change. If you take a long break from training or any real kind of exercise, ease yourself back into it. Implement a training schedule that allows your body to adjust.

It’s okay to start slow and start small! Everyone has to start somewhere.

Training Is All About Progress

Stop thinking about how weak you are and start thinking about how much stronger you’re getting.

Stop thinking about how fat you and start thinking about how much fitter you’re becoming.

Every day is a chance to be better and to do better.

Team Max Power’s Mike DeCarlo competed today in the USAPL Star and Stripes powerlifting tournament in Clark’s Summit, PA. He finished first place at 132lbs breaking a state record Bench Press (200lbs) and set a personal record in the Deadlift (330lbs).

Congrats to Mike not only on the win and PR but also making weight!

If you saw Mike as he was training, you know he earned himself a big sushi dinner after the competition. And maybe a few dozen donuts and an ice cream cake or two. The dude was lean.

Given that it’s the holiday season, you might want to know how Mike went from a fit 145lbs (give or take) to a leaned-out 132lbs while maintaining a fairly impressive amount of strength.

How Mike DeCarlo Lost 10 Pounds in 4 Weeks

1. Define your goal. Set a timeline.

Mike started tightening up his diet four weeks ahead of the meet. This way he wasn’t overly dehydrated (and subsequently weaker) by the time he had to compete.

Four weeks was enough time to cut the weight he needed to cut and not so long that he felt like he was dieting and depriving himself forever.

Mike also set softer goals – benchmarks he wanted to reach at the end of each week. This way he could check his progress and keep motivating himself as he hit every soft goal.

2. Get daily feedback and support.

Mike weighed himself daily and then posted his weight on the whiteboard in the gym for everyone to see.

He also talked up his goals and his plan to everyone – clients, friends, coworkers. Have you met Mike? You probably heard what he was doing. If he started slacking, people held him accountable.

Because he couldn’t hide his failures, he was forced to keep trying and to reach his goal.

3. Have a set nutrition plan.

For Mike, this was 5 meals a day, with 300 calories allotted to each meal. He had to get a certain amount of protein every day and supplemented with fiber to keep things moving. As he got closer to the day of the competition, he started tapering off carbs.

Would this work for everyone? Maybe, maybe not – everyone’s nutritional needs are different and everyone’s body reacts differently to weight and fat loss. Of course, Mike is an extremely active individual with a killer gym in his house and a flexible schedule. He’s also pretty determined.

The point is, he had a plan and he stuck to it. And he lost 10lbs in 4 weeks.

There’s about 4 weeks between now and Christmas. Instead of stuffing your face at every holiday party, why don’t you get a head start on your New Year’s resolutions and try cutting 10lbs?

I had convinced a colleague to trek 80 miles across state lines with me for a Sunday group training session with Mike and Nick and the usual Max Power crew. My coworker had been training at the office gym for the past 6 weeks, taking group classes and working with a personal trainer, and I thought he was ready to be introduced to the world of Max Power pain.

He wanted to know what we’d be doing, and I was somewhat at a loss to describe the Max Power experience.

How do you describe a training session that might include any number of powerlifting, olympic lifting, plyometric, and just plain sadistic exercises that might involve kettlebells, chains, bumpers, sandbags, and slosh pipes – not to mention your bodyweight – to someone whose Gold’s Gym trainer had him doing something called “Kung-Fu Curls” just a few months ago? Someone who just recently learned what a burpee was and who looked skeptical at the fitness enhancing properties of a farmer’s walk?

The average person has some idea of what a “personal trainer” is – the guy who counts reps and sets the pins on the leg curl machine. But does he know what a “strength coach” does?

And the more avid “fitness center” members might be familiar with squats, deadlifts, plyos, and high intensity intervals. But will that so-called gym rat truly understand how lifting a heavy weight and moving it from one spot to the next will make you question your sanity and will to live? The mental clarity and focus that comes from holding a plank for 30 more seconds or flipping a 250 pound tractor tire and jumping through it one more time?

That looking good in a swimsuit is more of an outcome, a byproduct, than the goal of training? That you’re more proud of how much you can pull off the floor and hoist over your head than how you look in front of the mirror? (Although, let’s be real – train hard enough and you look damn good in the mirror.) Or even that you’re not taking him to a “class” – you’re taking him to “train.”

Because that’s the difference with Max Power and the normal gym experience – you don’t take “classes” with a “trainer” who gets you fit and helps you shed a few pounds. You “train” with a “strength coach” who helps you improve your performance – on the field, in the office, and just in life in general.

I couldn’t tell my buddy what we’d be doing because I really had no idea. “It’s usually circuit-based, since it’s a small group. It’s kind of like what you do now with your “Core and More” class, but with weights. And more intense. You know what those MMA guys do on the Ultimate Fighter? Almost like that but not really.”

“So we’ll be hitting people?”

“Uhh…probably not. But you never know. Maybe we’ll hit tires with a sledgehammer if we’re lucky.”

That conversation thread, and my enthusiastic description of a summer training session consisting solely of farmer’s walks (“Seriously, all you do is pick up something really heavy and walk with it. It’s awesome!”) for some reason did not seem to erase his skepticism. But my friend shrugged his shoulders and said, “Hey, maybe I’ll pick up a few things and add some variety to my repertoire.”

I could still hear the skepticism in his tone in the middle of our first set of exercises on Sunday – push-ups and pull-ups with 30 seconds of rest between rounds. “This is almost like my Core and More class, but T (the trainer) doesn’t let us rest this much.”

We moved on to the next set – squats and jump squats with chains hanging from our necks. Mike demonstrated and warned us to keep the chains tight – and that someone in the earlier session had puked at this point. My friend wasn’t saying much then. After several rounds with no end in sight (Mike: “It’s last person standing! Sit out the next round if you get lightheaded or want to vomit!”), my buddy quietly said to me, “Okay, I was wrong. This is way more intense than what T does.”

I would have grinned in triumph, but my quads had decided to secede from its union with my brain and were not obeying my mental commands to catch me after each jump squat. Another set, and I started seeing spots when I (finally) managed to stand up after my last jump. I threw my chain down in defeat, trying to massage some feeling back into my thighs as I watched Mike swoop in to pick up the chain and throw it around my friend’s neck. He picked up a few more chains laying around and added them as well. My friend didn’t complain or protest, just kept squatting and jumping. And squatting and jumping. And squatting. And jumping.

And at the end when Mike said they were done, and my buddy finally dumped the 5 chains off his neck, with steam rolling off his sweaty forehead in the cold morning air, he said, “Next week? Sure, I’m in!”

And that’s really the best way to describe a Max Power training session. It’s the blood rushing to your aching muscles and sweat dripping off your nose and the occasional desire to vomit or lay down. It’s pushing your limits until you come face to face with your own weaknesses and fears – and the strength and will to overcome them. And it’s really just getting the crap beat out of you for an hour and immediately asking, “Same time next week”?

So yeah, strength and conditioning. And so much more.

Most weekends I’m out at Max Power with whoever is crazy willing (or crazy stupid) enough to endure one of Mike and Nick’s workouts under the summer sun. Mostly, the crazy seems to involve testosterone, so it’s usually me and a group of guys.

This is what I’ve learned from training with the big boys:

• Guys like to burp. They will, in fact, burp a lot when training hard and pushing themselves. Learn to accept this, as burping is much more preferable to alternatives.

• Guys don’t care if you’re sweaty and gross while training. Mainly because they’re probably sweatier and grosser, so it’s okay to leave the makeup at home, ladies. Though not the deodorant – c’mon, that’s just common courtesy.

• It’s okay to push yourself. Though it’s really tempting to just sit back (or sprawl, depending on how wiped you are) to take the easy way out and use the excuse that you’re a girl. But guys – even after they’ve puked, even if they’ve aggravated an old injury or broken a state powerlifting record the day before – will keep pushing through and do another set.

I was talking to a friend the other day about working out. He’s been trying to bulk up recently, and he mentioned that his training partner was always looking for a “quick fix” – the next program or miracle supplement that will transform him into, I don’t know, who do guys want to look like nowadays? Wolverine? Daniel Craig? Blade (circa the first movie)?

I guess he’s looking for whatever extra little bit of edge will put him over the top and make his biceps ripple more. My friend was a little more philosophical about it. “You work out and you eat more. How much easier could it get than that?” And he’s right.

So why, when the formula for success is relatively simple and easy to follow, do we look for an easy way out like a supplement? You want to build muscle, all you have to do is lift weights and eat more calories. You want to lose weight, you burn more calories than you consume.