I would now like to make a public statement. Two, in fact. One more important than the other by a significant margin, but both still VERY important, VERY interesting.

I will start with the one of lesser importance—but lesser, mind you, only to the announcement which is to follow very closely behind it. This is not to imply that the impending announcement is by any accounts trivial or wholly uninteresting. No, in my view it still stands by itself a colossus—a St. Bernard, if you will—and only when it is seated adjacent to the subsequent announcement—say, a Bull Mastiff—does it bare the resemblance of a runty and puny and feeble sort of thing.

I have recently signed a book deal with Wiley and Sons, to furnish a “For Dummies” book. Take “For Dummies” for what it is and nothing more: a two-cent marketing ploy. This book is for folks who have been to school, I assure you.

The title, at present, will read “Paleo Fitness for Dummies”. As we approximate the release date, this is certainly subject to change, and I’m doubtless it will. But maybe it won’t. What will remain the same, however, is the substance of the thing—the essence of “Paleo Fitness.”

What has delighted me the most is the whole opportunity of it all. “Paleo Fitness” is a concept right now that can only be described as opaque. My intent is to defog it, to define it to the finest detail. While my interpretation of it is solely my own, it is a vivid one, and ultimately, one that will surely profit the masses.

If you’re willing to hear it, I’d like to tell you a little more. Please get comfortable.

Paleo fitness to me is fitness minimalism, nothing excessive, barren. It is a reversion to the fundamentals, dedicated in whole to beautiful human movement, vibrant health, and, of course, looking good. Its general air is back to basics, but at the very same time, there are frequent gusts of ingenuity—if I may be so immodest.

The thesis (and I quote myself):

“Any exercise program will improve in direct proportion to the number of things that can be left of out it that needn’t be there.”

Said another way:

“The secret to a good exercise program is to strip it down to the fewest possible parts—the fundamentals, if you will—and to leave it at that.”

This is what the book is about, keeping things uncluttered and thin. But this is not a thin book, not at all. Explaining minimalism apparently demands what is very near the maximum number of words any one book, save the Bible, can possibly hold between its two covers. The estimate, right now, is a 350-400 page behemoth. This is a tiring endeavor. But an enjoyable one. 

And luckily, I have help, from the lovely Dr. Kellyann Petrucci, the most wonderful co-author any one man could ever ask for. Dr. Kellyann, in case you didn't know, recently wrote Living Paleo for Dummies and Boosting Immunity for Dummies. Both of these works are tremendous, honestly two of the best Dummies books I've ever read.

A few more details…

The tentative release date is fall. But before then I will have acquired a bundle of advanced copies for giveaways. Naturally, I will give as many away to all of you on here as I possibly can. Naturally, I’d still mean a great deal to me if you ventured down to your local bookstore and bought a copy.

This book will feature programming drawn out to the farthest possible extent. That is, there will be programing for both beginning practitioners and advanced, there will be programming for those who wish to put on size, and programming for those who wish to take some off. There will be programming for the elderly, programming for the pregnant, and programming for the athlete. There is not a single population forgotten by this book. This is a strength training book. This is a metabolic training book. This is a fitness book. And this is a health book.

Inside you will find a breakdown of all the fundamental human movements, progressions towards what some would call “advanced movements”, as well as correctives and remedial drills to restore your movement to the highest achievable quality.

Yes, there will be swings, squats, presses, pull ups, one arm push-ups, hanging leg raises, snatches, pistol squats, sprints, crawling, Turkish get up, lunges, rack holds, farmer carries, chin ups, inversions, rolling, one arm one leg push-ups, L-sits, planks, and everything of the like. It’s all in there. Everything worthwhile, anyways.

I am excited to write this book for you.  And I hope someday “Paleo Fitness for Dummies” sits readily on your shelf—somewhere between the works of Euclid and Socrates.

There it is folks. The seed has taken, and I have since become a contended slave to the processes of its ultimate manifestation. I kid, of course. The whole pregnancy thing has proven to be ever so fascinating, the machinery of it all, wholly unpredictable, variable to extremes, and at times viciously temperamental. I’m sitting here eating Paleo chili, by the way.

Her High Exaltedness Christine Suzan comes down with a new ailment seemingly on the hour—the end effect invariably the same: a whirl of violence at either one of two ends of the human anatomy. On two venerable occasions, however, both ends exploded the very same time*! I will describe this you no further. But the tales, I tell you, are all very true.

*It would be to my direct physical benefit if none of you shared this post on a public domain larger than the one we have here, or any place where Christine may be likely sniff it out. I say sniff it out, because since having been confirmed pregnant she’s come about a rather peculiar and frighteningly magnified sense of smell. I wager that she could smell out a mole before a trained terrier even caught the faintest wind of it, while congested, and at twice the distant.

What a spectacle it has been thus far! Nevertheless, I am thrilled. Electrified! Me, a daddy! Can you believe it?

Today is a very good day. The sun beams are booming in through the curtains, I’m having a baby, and Lola pooped twice already.

Done talking.

The secret to abs is that there is no secret to be found anywhere at all. Great abs, which I liken to the big, blocky variety (for the fellas, naturally—let us go with delicately trimmed for the ladies) are the results of (1) a low enough body fat percentage and (2) an amply muscled midsection. In other words, great abs are chiefly a function of the following inputs (1) caloric restraint, (2) metabolic efforts, (3) heavy ab work.

And here again rolls in the same old chestnut. But I welcome it warmly, as I do all truths, no matter how cold.

Because here’s the thing, really. If you want to rise above average then you must be willing to do the things the common stock are not, able enough to do them, and unapologetically industrious in your doing of them. Anything else invariably results in a reversion to the mean. And only the losers have a central tendency. 

Entering the gym, I chugged behind some brute like a loose caboose. After a few clicks I detached and glided over to the kettlebell rack to work what sits a few scoops below.  

There I performed the fundamental pre-workout ritual of any narcissistic human being: to look hard into the mirror until utterly exhausted of the subject matter—this activity, you should know, averages 7 minutes. Afterwards, and only afterwards, do I find myself in a state favorable for bodily exercise.

[The following is part three on what is turning out to be a five part series on blogging as a profession. CLICK HERE to read part 1. CLICK HERE to read part 2.]

Blogging frequently emits an alluring but somewhat artificial scent: A scent that naturally baits two brands of people.

The first brand is chiefly folks of the common store bought variety, plain as a bowl of corn flakes. Their gross desire for an easy opt-out of the human comedy is surpassed only by their colossal lack of true ambition. Quite simply, they hate to work, and so are lured into blogging by the fishy smells of the charlatans, the quacks, and the counterfeits.

If what I have just detailed describes you, even distantly, then I must encourage you to pass on. I am not capable of helping you. 

Look, I’m not discouraging you or anything like that. There are many bloggers who rake a king’s ransom in the business of swindling. And if I have something to say to these jackals, it’s not to scorn them for sucking in the intellectually underprivileged—that, I leave to God. Rather, it’s to ridicule them for any and all lack of ingenuity in how they go about their business. Insofar as I can tell, the cheats, tricksters, and charlatans have been using the same old, horribly overworked devices since the dawn of this republic. All I’m saying, really, is that it’d be nice to see a quack with some freshness about him.

But here I go off at a tangent. Let us get back to where we were.

The second brand is that of the artist. This person is marked intrinsically by fire in perpetuum. This is what keeps his blood boiling over, his legs on the trot—and his spirit pushing forward—stopping never at dead ends or dog shit. He understands that security is a false and limiting crutch, and seeks nothing of the sort. His appetite is whetted only for accomplishment.

The artist does not know it all—but has the proclivity to learn it all, to suck it in ad infinitum. And his chief purpose is to contribute to a whole greater than himself—if you’re a rationalist you may call it the cosmos—spiritualists would perhaps say it’s celestial—and hippies would probably call it life-force, or something like that. Truthfully it doesn’t matter what you call it, because the net effect is the same: The artist creates.

Are his actions largely money driven? The answer to various degrees is often yes. Sometimes this is in part, other times it is in whole. Either way, the artist is scarcely propelled by anything rooted in altruism. In form, this may appear to be the case, but in substance human essence remains predominantly self-interested. This means little, though, because the true artist—whatever his motives otherwise—invariably aims to create something that is good. And so he thoroughly intends to improve the earthly balance sheet—to strike the asset account with a hard debit.

What I have defined is the artist. But what I have redefined is the entrepreneur: The person who generates value. This is to say the person who helps persons.

If what I have just detailed describes you, then I can help. I can help you to get the word out about the value you create, and I can help you to make a fair return on it. 

Blogging would be the perfect job, save for the fact it’s still a job. It’s a full time gig. So it will beat you up, and, at times, kick you square in the nuts. These are lessons one must learn by hard experience, I suppose, but if you take this as true now it will save you a lot of pain later.

Now if there is one more lesson to be learned before we begin, let it be this: There is no good purpose to be served in promoting crap. Doing so—as any practiced marketer will tell you—only hastens the rate at which people find out you suck. To wit: You ought to be the absolute best at what you do before you start saying you’re any good.

Just something to keep in mind, that’s all.

Now rather than tell you what you should do, I’d like to show you what I do. That is, what I’ve done well, or what’s worked well for me. You may take whatever you’d like—and if you’d like to work closer with me on all this stuff, then I encourage you to investigate our Killing It With Ketllebells Certification, where Som and I will help you to develop and implement your own marketing and business plan (online, offline, or both), and teach you how to run large group kettlebell bootcamps. 

For ease, I will fill out a “one-page business plan”, answering the three following questions:

1.      What Do I Sell (and How Much Do I Charge)?

2.      Who Do I Sell It To?

3.      How Do I Get The Word Out?

I’ll answer the first question now, and save the other two for a later post.

This blog is a major marketing vehicle for both my online and offline businesses, if I may presume the two can be separated out.  

I’ll start with what we do offline.

My Killing It With Kettlebells bootcamp business is run out of The Dragon Gym in Exton, PA. I have largely opted out of personal training as a service offering. Instead, I run six large group classes a week: Mondays and Wednesdays at 12pm, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:30pm, and Wednesdays and Fridays at 5:30am.

Pricing for our bootcamps ranges from $149-199/month depending on the level of membership.

We also host multiple workshops and seminars throughout the year. [ I suppose now would be as good a time as any to shamelessly plug Strength Fest. ]

Pricing for workshops and seminars ranges anywhere from $99-999 depending on the event.

Lastly, we offer our Killing It With Kettlebells Instructor Level Certification and Fitness Business Development Program. This is where Som and I teach you how to teach large group kettlebell bootcamps. We also show you the ins and outs of our kettlebell business, and help you to create and implement your own business and marketing plan. We limit the group to 12 candidates. This is not a beginner kettlebell course. This is a course for those who are interested in learning to coach large group kettlebell classes, and for those who are already in, or are seriously considering opening their own fitness business. In short, we help you to do what you love and make good money doing it.

This is our most expensive offering, but I’ve heard it’s really worth it. If you think you might be a good candidate for this certification, email me at PatFlynn@ChroniclesOfStrength.com with the subject line of “KIWK” and I will send you a series of questions for you to answer so that we may figure that out. We can even get on the phone and chat about it, if you’d like. No obligation. Promise.

Pricing for our Killing It with Kettlebells Certification ranges from $997-1997 depending on when you register.

There are a few other things I do offline, but those are my major profit centers. So let us move now to what I do online.

Our online business is a mix of bigger ticket items, lower end entry points, and continuity programs. We’ll start with the latter.

The Chronicles of Strength Inner Circle and the Chronicles of Strength Print newsletter is my current continuity program—that is, this is a program where membership is billed monthly.

The Chronicles of Strength Inner Circle includes a full print newsletter mailed out to members every month. This is quite frankly my best work. I put more time into that newsletter than I do anything else, and I love doing it.

Additionally, members of the Inner Circle get private email coaching access to me, coaching call-in days with me, monthly training webinars, monthly recipes, monthly workouts, programming, you name it. The Inner Circle members are my best and most loyal customers, so I do everything I can to help them succeed—to provide them with value far above and beyond what they pay to be a member each month. As an entrepreneur or business owner, your aim should always be to exceed all expectations. Unless of course your aim to run a mediocre business.

Pricing for my Inner Circle members ranges from $19-39/month depending on the level of membership and whether or not they live inside North America (postage is a killer).

*If you are not yet an Inner Circle member, I’d love it if you tried it out for a month. You can cancel anytime, so there’s no risk when you sign up.*

On the lower end of the pricing spectrum there mostly sits a selection of eBooks and ePrograms. The Birth of a Hero Vol 2 stands tall at the top of the charts, sells like ice in Hell.

These range from $27-99 depending on the product.

The bigger ticket items include private coaching with either Som or me (we offer both business and fitness coaching), training webinars, and specialized programs.

The pricing for these ranges from $299-699.

If you are interested in private coaching and would like to know more about what we can help you with, email me at PatFlynn@chroniclesofstrength.com with the subject line of “coaching”.

Effectively, that is the sum of it all.  Effectively enough, anyways. 

PS - If you have any questions about any of this, please post them in the comment section. I'm here to help. 

The Century, so entitled by its lofty rep composition, is a proficiency exam courtesy of the elusive Paul Wade, author of Convict Conditioning.

Assuming I made no misinterpretations, the task is as follows:

Men:

40 x squat
30 x push up
20 x hanging knee raise
10 x pull up

Women:

40 x squat
30 x knee push up
20 x hanging knee raise
10 x australian pull up

I think I passed. Som did pretty good too, but I think he may have missed a rep on the squats. That's OK, though, because he's ninja. 

Thanks to my buddy Christa for riffing this one out to Pantera and making it look pretty. 

Rock out as many rounds as you can in 15 min.

So as many of you know I have a primal fitness book coming out through Wiley. I know I've been a bit scanty on the details, but that will change soon. Promise.

Anyways, I wanted to get your feedback on something. Got a minute?

If I could answer any one fitness question for you in this book, what would it be?

Please post your feedback in the comment section. I don't care how relevant you think it is, I just want to hear from you.

There may be some prizes for the most thoughtful answers...

*[The following is a continuation on what may very well turn out to be a four part series on blogging as a fitness professional. CLICK HERE to read part 1]*

Many beginner fitness professionals (and writers) are attracted to blogging not because they have anything really important to say, but because it seems the easiest way for them to say what they feel is important, but is not at all.

Most of what fitness bloggers write is rubbish. At best, it’s a wretched form of journalese. Most commonly, it’s childish nonsense. Yes, I say this even about the most popular bloggers—as one does not have to write well to write successfully—as there are many prosperous bloggers who write trash, and countless vain bloggers who write bouquets. Really, to fare well at this trade, one just has to work the clichés of the craft.

This is why we are swarmed, again and again and again, with the same dull and banal knowledge, set forth in the same shoddy and loose workmanship—their sentences hanging unlaced, flabby as their necks.

Most of these folks write the same, because most of these folks think the same. And so their work is as fresh as their thoughts are stale. This is to say it all very much reads like a flat soda.

Information: They simply ingest and regurgitate it—rarely do they digest it themselves. And the result is a colossal waste of bandwidth, if you ask me.

I cannot help you to not think like everyone else. It’s on you to discover how to make new connections, relationships, and significances between things. And to be honest, I don’t think anybody can teach it. I think it mostly has to do with your DNA. You either got it, or you don’t. And if you got it, well then welcome to the vast minority— 1% of 1/5 of the American population, I reckon. This sounds kind of cruel, but it’s what I think is true. So maybe this makes me something hard-boiled and unsentimental? Oh well.

What I can do…I mean, what I can try to do, is help you to not SOUND like everyone else.  I have a few ideas on voice and style that I’d like to share with you today. Some are my own. Some are borrowed. Borrowed, from writers I greatly admire: Samuel Clemens, E.B White, and William Zinsser to name three whose books at present sit to my right and to my left.

Voice and style are potent devices. With them, you may very well get away with writing the same old shit, because it will be decorated by your charm. It is how you can breathe new life into something dead or dying.

Now when it comes to voice or style, many will say that you ought to write for a particular audience. And many college professors will tell you that’s probably the right thing to do too. In fact, my college writing professor told me just that. He said it was the number one rule.

But I don’t think it is. I think this is what causes most to write in that wretched form of journalese. And I think any attempt to teach writing as a set of rules is as futile and as silly as an attempt to teach someone how to sing out of their butt.

Really, if anything, you should write for yourself. Write what you want to read. Write what you want to talk about. Write what you love.

And I think that last part’s really it. Writing what you love. Because what you love infallibly oozes out anyways, and there’s little good to be had trying to clot it. Instead, put what you love on tap and keep your opinions always ready. [Me, I love opining almost as much as I love hearing others opine, and telling them they’re wrong.]

Now finding your voice, as far as I’m concerned, is no act of finding at all. Rather, it’s an act of unleashing.  Your voice is who you are, and style is an echo of personality. Finding your voice is purely the result of self-expression.

Well then Pat, if style is as easy as expressing yourself, then why do many find it so difficult?

Observe the following well: I said finding your voice is as easy as expressing yourself, but never did I say expressing yourself was easy.

However, I believe all the difficultly related to this may be reduced to two arenas: (1) A lack of skill and (2) a lack of balls.

To illustrate the first issue: A man can no more push out who he is through words when he lacks the skill to write than he can through melody when he has no ear for music.

To understand this is to know what it means to say that we ought to first master our tools, and learn to approach the pen as a musician does the piano. This is a convenient analogy, because through our tools—similes, metaphors, antithesis—we string words together, as a musician does notes—through scales, chords, arpeggios.

Any musician—save, of course, the shitty ones—first takes the time to master his craft. And the more the musician hones his tools—his vibrato, his staccato, his smearing—the easier it becomes for his soul to shine through.

This is not a rule mind you, just a suggestion.

And so I'd now like to submit my thesis: Skill is the undying requisite of style.

Let’s now cast a neon light on this point: You cannot express yourself through voice—at least in any manner describable as intelligible—without first acquiring the skill of language. Therefore, how could you ever reasonably expect to showcase your ambiance on the back of the written word without first securing even the slightest grip on the art of writing? This question is purely rhetorical. But you can still try to answer it if you’d like.

Now I said the second difficulty to overcome is a lack of balls. I won’t speak long on this, because there’s not much to say on it. I suspect audacity can be learned, much like anything else, but I’m not the one to teach it. All I can say is that writing bold is like asking out a pretty girl. If you do it, and she says no, you’re humiliated. And that’s no big thing, really. But if you don’t do it, then you’re forever regretful. Now that sucks.

[The other option is if you have a friend who likes the same girl, then you tell him what to say and watch what happens. That’s called being a ghostwriter.]

What you’ll find, as you settle into your own as a writer, is that your style is simply who you are and how you’re feeling on that particular day. And this is why my writing often sounds different—why I sometimes come off thoughtful and other times silly—because mood colors writing.

When you’re in high spirits your words will bounce along as spryly as a ping pong ball. When you’re gloomy, your prose will weep. And if you gotta shit, then it may all read a bit rushed.

Now, in some instances it’s important you temper this. But in most cases, it’s best if you don’t. 

Finally, I leave you with this. If you like it, and want more of this sort of thing, I invite you to become a Chronicles of Strength Gold Member and subscribe to the Chronicles of Strength Print Newsletter.

I’ll start with two confessions:

1. Next week, I have a huge confession to make—and a few other major announcements.
   
   
2. Come mid-January, everything is going to change for Chronicles of Strength. 

I’ll release more details via my Facebook page and on here at the turn of the new year. Until then, please enjoy this week’s KWOW.

I love stews. I love the slowness about them.

I also love Get Ups.