the Blog
Ruminations from Aruba: personal pictures, what people said about us, and more
Every year I go to Aruba for a two- to three-week long vacation. I’m a beachcomber. I love the calm waters, the Caribbean blue, and the length of sandy beach I can stroll all day long and just… “be.” But each year when I go to Aruba my interactions with others seems...
Mental fitness, mindfulness and sustaining then BUILDING off of each goal
I'm currently working on a project right now that's about achievement, psychology, and about how to reach any goal, and how to understand what gets in your way if you ever find yourself coming up short. The following -- mindfulness -- is an important aspect of it. Put...
How your metabolism responds over a year after an ill-advised diet
I wrote Metabolic Damage and the Dangers of Dieting in 2007. At that time, whenever anyone was writing on the topic it was framed as a debate over whether or not “metabolic damage” was even real. On the one side, people argued that metabolic damage was real; on the...
Power and strength, strength and power
I’m getting crotchety in my old age. I continue to be amazed and disappointed by what people are NOT learning in so-called certification courses. It’s amazing to me that you come out of these courses understanding little if anything useful about the concepts of...
Environmental and emotional triggers that control your brain and cause self-sabotage
More and more of you are learning and embracing that this North American Diet-Mentality of “eat this, not that” is incomplete as a standalone approach to your weight-loss and weight-control. I talk about this a lot in my book “The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and...
Understanding the Metabolic Compensation System
How “The Anti-Catabolic Phase” of Short-Term Weight-Loss Misleads You By now you should all understand the limitations of the calories-counting faulty metabolic mathematics when it comes to long-term control. But there are still more elements of the biology of...
The value of ongoing Coaching, from a decade of experience – guest post by Andy Sinclair
Andy Sinclair is a client of Scott's who's been with Scott for over 10 years. Andy's been on the cover of fitness magazines, romance novels, ads, and much more. Here's a write-up by Andy himself about the value of customization, ongoing coaching, and his experiences...
Real People, Real Cases: Coach Abel (or, how food restriction leads to binge eating)
Judge Judy is the longest running television show of all time, even longer than Oprah. I can see why: she’s a no-nonsense, get-to-the-point kind of person and her authenticity in her role as judge comes through loud and clear. That obviously resonates with viewers...
“A calorie is a calorie” — Um… NOT.
One thing that's remained true about the fitness and diet industry for the past four decades is this: it loves its math and formulas. For decades the calories in/calories mathematical “balance” equation has ruled. But real science has been calling that into question...
Let's talk squats — what you need to know about the king kong of exercises
No matter what end of the strength and conditioning spectrum an expert may be interested in; any expert worthy of being called an expert will agree that although there are many “pertinent” exercises to be used in specific programs, there is one exercise that stands...
Lessons from the Tao athlete: What does it all mean? What is physique transformation for?
I get it. I’ve been there. I started where you started: working out to develop my physique, not even sure why it appealed to me so much. I was just a kid who did all sports growing up and excelled at them. Now I wanted to be in the iron game – even though I sucked at...
Poor Pitiful Peter, the Paleo Pundit: Debunking Paleo yet again, part 2
Part 1 explored the Paleo Diet Religion from the outside-in. In previous articles I have discussed the fact that Paleolithic humans were not lean because of what they ate (another point often insinuated in the Paleo Religious dogma). Humans were lean because of how...
Poor Pitiful Peter, the Paleo Pundit: Debunking Paleo yet again
A while back I wrote a couple of articles regarding “The Nonsense of Paleo Diet," yet I still receive questions about it. Since it seems to be making the rounds again, I’ll write about this hopefully one last final time. But I have a lot to say, so I’ll write this in...
Using the power clean and olympic lift variations for size and development
The past decade or so has witnessed a real comeback in popularity of Olympic Lifts and Olympic Lift variations across a wide range of fitness applications. I have implemented Olympic lift variations in many of my MET Programs as well, although often for very different...
Training, program design and the process of adaptation: what you need to know
In my book The Abel Approach I discuss the training model used for proper programming and client considerations. There are 5 factors to consider: 1) Effort 2) Training Strategy 3) Work Capacity 4) Recovery Capacity 5) Internal Biochemical and Hormonal Environment....
The sh*tter: a cautionary tale about biofeedback, metabolism, and diet cults
I have a million stories from my decades in the industry. Some stories are positive, some… not so much. However, all of them are at least educational. This is the sad yet true story of a girl who was unfortunately nicknamed “The Shitter.” I tell the story to make four...
The truth about the “coffee controversy” (I've got good news)
As I sit here drinking my venti Columbian blend, I recall how I wanted to write this article some two years ago when two contradictory research findings about coffee came through the news cycle within a week of each other. One study “concluded” that coffee drinking...
The truth about deadlifts and program design
When discussing the most difficult resistance exercises to do... well, there's no doubt that squats and deadlifts are at the top. Both movements are complicated to master, and both create a specific systemic intensity that cannot be matched by other exercises. The...