Guru in the fitness world has become synonymous with snake oil salesman. My buddy the glute guy, Bret Contreras, has a regular series of “Grill the Guru” posts and videos where he takes down pseudo-science and questionable justifications by well known fitness personalities. Being called a guru, to most people, would be taken as an insult.

But as so often happens guru has been appropriated and misused. It’s a Sanskrit term which has important meaning in Indian culture and tradition, and is used in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other religions and cultural traditions. The connotation in these traditions is a teacher – but much more than just a teacher. A guru is someone who has deep and expansive knowledge, as well as the varied abilities as mentor, counselor, guide, and journeyman with the ability to impart knowledge and wisdom.

Guru is far from a pejorative – it’s a revered position.

So we took this term of honor and ruined it as we often seem to do, because we apparently can’t have nice things.

But I think it’s a mistake to think of the word guru in this way, and I think more people would do well to have a guru.

If you were to exclusively follow my buddy Bret Contreras your training would be fairly strength-focused consist of large compound movements done for relatively low reps (1-5 in general) along with some higher rep accessory movements and a lot of glute and booty exercises for both low and high reps. You wouldn’t stress over nutrition too much, focusing on eating real food with lots of protein and not getting into a lot of supplements.

What if you only followed my wife, Jen Sinkler, for your fitness information? Well your training would be biased a bit more towards strength or sport and involve a lot of large compound movements with a lot of movement variation and rep ranges from low to high. You’d probably throw in some circuit workouts which are well-known to improve general fitness and work capacity and are usually fun. Nutritionally you’d follow sort of a Paleo-plus-cupcakes strategy of eating a lot of whole foods, keeping protein high, and not worrying about the occasional dessert or junk food. Your workout fashion would be on point.

If you followed my friend Mike Vacanti you’d pay a little more attention to your nutrition I’d wager – at least for a while  – by diligently tracking your macros and making sure you hit the targeted proteins, fats, and carbs every day. You wouldn’t worry too much about how you got there as long as it was mostly real food sources, and you’d eat a fair amount of ice cream. Your training would look a lot like a recurring theme with a bit more focus on bodybuilding instead of maximal strength, lots of large compound movements combined with higher rep accessory work for the aesthetics.

Or, if you followed my pal Pat Flynn your training would be spartan but effective – using only a minimal complement of barbells and kettelbells to create workouts that are primarily strength based but short, difficult, and effective. There’s a good chance your journey would have started with a fairly-challenging fat loss program that would have you limiting what you eat to only the bare essentials, but after that you’d relax the reins a bit and focus on moving the big rocks and keeping your diet high in protein, good fats, and relatively low in added carbs or sugar.

What about someone who leans a little further towards a more extreme philosophy? If you were sold on the Paleo principals and you followed my friend Robb Wolf you would train primarily with large compound movements along with some hiking, carrying, or low intensity cardio. You might even be convinced to try out Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Following the Paleo principals would have you eating a lot of protein, a fairly high amount of good fat, and you’d keep your carbs really low. For most people this would work exceptionally well, but a few would notice the low carbs affecting their performance and ability to train – those folks would adjust upwards according to their tolerance until they find the sweet spot. You might care a bit more about where your food come from and you might pay more attention to things like circadian rhythms and how much natural light you get.

My point – if you haven’t been able to discern it yet – is that the broad strokes are all pretty much the same no matter who you listen to. As a result, when you take everything that one person says as gospel, and then take everything that someone else says as gospel and try to reconcile them you’ll get hung up on minor details that conflict but don’t matter.

This is the danger of not having a guru, or having more than one guru.

I’d argue that you’re better off trusting one source to be your mentor or “guru” until which time they either prove they’re not trustworthy or you determine that their approach and philosophy just doesn’t jive with your constitution – no matter how deep or correct their wisdom is.

I wouldn’t be ashamed to say I have a guru. What about you?

(Disclaimer: This article is going to assume that you have a level of income sufficient to meet your needs with some wiggle room to spare. In other words, you have discretionary income and you could possibly spend more wisely or differently than you do today. If you are living at the poverty line while working multiple jobs I’m sorry but this is probably not the article for you. With this disclaimer in mind I hope to avoid the usual torrent of angry messages about how privileged and entitled I am.)

I used to live in a big house with a giant back yard. I had foxes, deer, ducks, voles, squirrels and who knows what else doing their thing in that yard. As a result, I never noticed a lot of the little activities that went on out there. Now, in South Philly, my “back yard” is a wooden patio deck with a single potted plant on it. In a surprise to no one when you strip away all the distractions and focus on one thing you notice more about that one thing.

And I just noticed that a goddamn squirrel was digging holes to hide nuts in the dirt of my plant.

The very same day I got a letter from my Health Savings Account (HSA) provider which reminded me to login to my account to check in on it.

Lo and behold I had a not insignificant pot of money that had accumulated that I had completely forgotten about.

In case you’re not familiar with HSAs they can be used as a tax-advantaged, meaning you don’t pay taxes on the money you put into them, savings account for either medical expenses (including elective ones, so if I ever decide to get Lasik I can use that money) or in a lesser-known strategy you can simply use it as an additional retirement account. The point of this article isn’t to explain HSAs in detail, however.

The point is that you can take advantage of some of the ways we are all irrational and driven by habits and whims rather than good sense when it comes to money.

You know that friend whose cheapness is exceeded only by their ability to accurately and pedantically account for exactly what portion of the check they owe, down to the penny?

Yeah that friend is the outlier. The exception to the rule.  That friend probably already has a retirement account so teeming with money that they could afford to not be so cheap. I’m happy for them, but it’s probably not you.

Most people not only aren’t saving enough for later in life, but they’re actually going into debt far beyond their means. Everyone thinks that they’re going to save or invest money “when they have some extra” but no one ever has any extra because that’s not how most people operate with money.

For example, the average U.S. household carries $15,000 in credit card debt alone.

Imagine if I were to ask you if you’d like to take out a loan for $15,000. More than likely you’d decline, knowing that’s a sizeable chunk of money and not going to be easy to pay off.

Yet the psychological ease of handing over your credit card makes it all too easy to rack up the exact same amount of debt one small charge at a time.

It’s death by a thousand paper cuts. We’re not logical and rational, so we have to temper ourselves against… ourselves.

But the good news is that you can easily flip the script and take advantage of the same irrationalities to make your assets, instead of debts, inflate.

And it’s all totally automatic.

The vast majority of people operate the same flawed way when it comes to money. If they have money in their accounts they spend it, and if they don’t have money they cut back on spending. This might work fine when you’re a child with a piggy bank, but it falls apart when you have multiple credit cards, checking accounts, and auto-payments setup to take money out of your accounts. By the same token, all of these moving parts is what makes this “trick” work so well.

The key is to setup automatic transfers of money into investment or savings accounts, so you never see the money, you never miss it, and you cut back on spending because it’s not there.

There are dozens of ways to do this, but I’ll give you a couple examples of the simplest things you can do.

The absolute first thing you should do money-wise is take advantage of an employer-matched retirement program if your job provides one. This is LITERALLY free money and you would be crazy not to take advantage of it. Whatever it is, a 401k or an IRA, take advantage of it up to the maximum contribution. It’s also…wait for it… automatic. Every company should opt you in automatically by default, but many (most?) don’t.

With that out of the way, it’s time to setup some automatic transfers into other savings vehicles.

As an example, I have money automatically transferred out of my checking account into 4 separate buckets:

1. Bills – all major bills are on auto-draft so I don’t have to remember to pay them, and I never see that money.
2. Travel – Jen and I each contribute $200/mo to this, so at least once a year there is enough money for a pretty significant trip that is completely paid for and we don’t have to find the money for.
3. Retirement – this consists of several different buckets of different investment vehicles. What is best for you is very much going to depend on your situation, but the important thing is that you have something. If in doubt start by maxing out an IRA and then go from there. Do your own homework and get some expert advice, but I use Betterment for a non-trivial portion of my net worth and couldn’t be happier. For the reasoning, check out this Planet Money episode. Betterment is just a very easy way to automatically invest in index funds.
4. HSA – this is both a health rainy day fund as well as a backdoor retirement account.

I never see any of this money, and I never miss it. Everything happens with automatic transfers behind the scenes. Of course my spending habits have had to shift with a not-insignificant portion of my income being hidden away from me, but the point is that I don’t notice it.

You spend it if you have it, but you don’t spend it if you don’t have it.

Actual Real Steps to Take

Basically, open a Betterment account. People who talk to me about money eventually wonder why I am such an evangelist for Betterment (Wealthfront is good too. Charles Schwab’s product is not.)

There are some really basic fundamental evidence-based truths about investing that have held up over time.

1. Don’t lose money.
2. Invest often and regularly.
3. Allocate assets intelligently. (aka don’t put all your eggs in one basket)
4. Don’t try to pick stocks. (See #1)
5. Don’t time the market. (See #2)
6. Avoid fees that eat up your returns.

Turns out so-called robo-advisors like Betterment and Wealthfront basically solve these problems for you. They make it easy to automate, they balance everything for you, they have ultra low fees, and they invest you in a wide range of low-cost ETFs that cover broad indices. You can still screw it up by being a stupid human and yanking your money out, but it’s harder!

I don’t care what you use. I’m purposely not including my Betterment referral link because I’ve already maxed out my referrals, but if you want the link to get the free 6 months reach out to me and I’ll send it to you.

But, please, do something.

If you don’t know if you should create a taxable account, a Roth IRA, or a traditional IRA I can give you one simple tip and a reference article. If you don’t have ANY safety net at all, create a normal taxable account so that there is no risk of penalty if you need to use the money in an emergency. If you have that covered you can decide between a Roth and traditional and this article is helpful for that.

What you actually do with the money you’re saving is important, but not as important as that you automate putting the money away.

I’m In Debt!

So all of this sounds great you say, but you’re in debt you say, so there’s no extra to invest nor would it be a good idea with the interest you’re paying on the debt. I’ve been there. Turns out the exact same principle still applies. Take a fixed amount and apply it automatically to your debt until it’s gone. When that is done immediately shift that same amount over to investments. You will be accustomed to a certain standard of living and that won’t change, but you’ll now be putting money away for the future.

How much to squirrel away?

The short answer is an amount that makes you uncomfortable, but not enough to put you in a bad position or cause problems.

As a longer answer here are a few strategies you can use to come up with an amount:

1. Take your bank and or credit card statement from the previous couple months and go through them line by line. Add up all the charges that are discretionary. Restaurants, bars, Amazon orders, movies, new iPhones, and so on. Be ruthless and honest in this. If you didn’t have to spend it to keep a roof over your head or food in your belly, add it up. Take the whole amount and divide it by the number of months you looked at, and then take 20% of that amount. If you spent $1000 on discretionary things, you’d come up with $200. Start there. Every six months increase the amount by 10%.
2. Just start with $100. Every three to six months increase it by $100 until it causes too much strain, then back off.
3. The nuclear option: Go to this calculator and put in your details  Play with the “I save X amount annually” until you get to the number that balances what you are likely to have in retirement, and what you’ll need in retirement. Start putting that amount of money away and force everything else to fall into place.

No matter what you choose to do, the important thing as always is that you take action.

Don’t get lost in the weeds of the details of finance – really, it’s not that complicated. Take and implement the lesson of automation and only then start figuring out how you can optimize your various contributions and vehicles.

It may be hard to believe that I don’t love the gym. As someone who’s spent a not-insignificant portion of my life in gyms trying to get as strong as possible you would think that I’m enamored with the process and it’s something I couldn’t live without–a sentiment that many regular gym-goers do share.

But I don’t. In fact most of the time I see it as necessary drudgery. Sure there are times that it’s exciting to chase a particular goal, or when I am really enjoying what I’m doing, but that’s not the majority of it. I view working out as a necessary chore, something akin to homework, that I have to do so that my body is capable of doing whatever I want it to do. And, yes, I recognize how lucky I am to even be able to work out regularly.

I’m not going to take the time to try to convince you that lifting weights and doing some form of cardiovascular exercise is worthwhile. Suffice to say that if there was a pill that controlled weight, increased your lifespan, improved mental health and general mood, strengthened bones and prevented osteoporosis, reduced the risk of many cancers, reduced or eliminated type 2 diabetes, reduced cardiovascular disease, improved ability to do daily tasks, importantly for older people reduced and prevented damaging falls, increased energy both perceived and actual, improved immune system function, and reduced stress it would be without a question the most popular drug in the history of humanity and everyone would take a daily dose.

But, I am here in full recognition that the number of people who currently exercise regularly (going for hikes and occasionally being outside is great but let’s be clear, it’s not the same as progressive resistance training and intentional cardiovascular exercise) is a fraction of a fraction.

And I realize how much I am at fault here, by letting perfect be the enemy of good. A new gym member asks “how often should I work out?” Well I tell them that three times per week is generally ideal to get the best results. And it is. This is virtually indisputable. But that’s too much for a lot of people.

Something that as a gym owner keeps me up at night is that for the majority of the majority this desire and ability to dedicate a couple hours (including transit time etc) to going to the gym the majority of the week nights hangs in the most tenuous of balances between other priorities and desires. All it takes is a job change, a new baby, a new relationship, a move, or any number of other things and this person won’t come back to the gym at all for 5-6 years until they start the cycle over again.

So I offer a solution.

This program is not going to get you the fastest “results.” This program isn’t optimal or ideal. This program isn’t going to put slabs of muscle on your body or strip layers of fat like all good programs promise. This program isn’t as good as a program that gives you more practice, more progression, and more time under the weights.

But, this program is something I think that someone can, even begrudgingly, drag themselves to the gym to do once a week.

It’s something I think you could do for years, because it’s just once a week. And doing this for years will have a meaningful effect on your quality of life.

Sorry, no 12-week promises here.

If you hate the gym, for whatever reason, but you recognize the value that consistently doing focused exercise over the course of years can hold then this program is for you.

The Program & How to Use It

The program is simple. One workout per week. Some of the exercises will repeat, but they may be new at first. You have an entire week between workouts so this should give you enough time to do your homework, understand the intention method behind the movement, and be ready for the workout. Part of any strength program is taking ownership of your body and learning how to best utilize it. This is no different.

Most of the days are just two exercises. The weights you choose should be challenging. If you picked the lightest weights in the gym you could finish the whole workout in 3 minutes and you wouldn’t get much out of it. But if you choose weights are challenging, such that you need a couple minutes to recover in between sets this will be a good workout.

Sometimes a little specific cardiovascular exercises is included. Keep this easy, at a pace where it might be hard to keep up a conversation but you aren’t struggling to catch your breath.

Don’t hesitate to make adjustments. Three sets not enough? Do another one. Want to go heavier and do fewer reps? Great, do that!

Who knows, maybe you’ll learn to like the gym. Even love it.

Here’s the program itself. I’ve also created a PDF version that has links to tips to how-to videos. Just trade me your email address so I can keep you updated on any changes. If people like this and find it useful maybe I’ll expand it out to a full year program. Click the program image, or click here to download the full version.

Just For Fun

Tweet at me and include the hashtag #IHateTheGym and tell me why you hate the gym. Maybe it’s a one-off experience like Allie’s, or a more general sentiment.

Walking 4mph at an incline on the treadmill while the perfect Swedish girl next to me gracefully jogs at 9mph 😒 #ihatethegym

— allie (@allie_leachman) October 13, 2016

Either way I want to hear your stories.