ARM 200: WHAT TO EXPECT AND WHY WE DO IT

If you don’t know about our new curriculum–which replaces all of our old offerings–please tap/click HERE for a recap.

If you haven’t yet read my sneak preview of ARM 100, the first course in our ARM ACADEMY curriculum, please tap/click HERE and give it a quick review.

WHAT IT IS

ARM 200: EXPERIMENTS & DISCOVERIES follows ARM 100: INTRODUCTIONS & CONSIDERATIONS. It’s a week-long course, during which our directors, Adam Robert McDonald and Jeff Bao Nguyen–along with our team of coaches, trainers, and other experts–will help you come to know and understand your body, life, and self in a whole new way.

This new level of self-awareness–sharp, specific, and sometimes surprising–is achieved through a combination of one-on-one tutorial appointments (our own fitness/wellness/performance-oriented version of life coaching) and coaching appointments (in other words, personal training). Along the way, we’ll conduct a BIOSIGNATURE analysis as well–more than one if necessary. This is to help us understand your metabolism and how to work with it for optimal results. Of course, if you have any sort of test results from your family physician–the results of your annual check-up, for example–that’s extremely helpful as well.

Your coaching appointments are rarely with one person, as it’s important for you to experience our range of styles and personalities. It’s also important for you to experience your own body performing different types of exercise. To that end, we’ll make sure that you get equal portions of what we call adaptive, metabolic, and constitutional activity. In each case, we’ll be assessing where your strengths and weakness are, with an emphasis upon factors (such as mobility) that are almost impossible to gauge by oneself.

Throughout your experience, you’ll be guided through the process of designing new possibilities for yourself in the areas of fitness (how lean, quick, strong, and flexible you are), wellness (how calm, focused, centred, balanced, well-rested, and stress-free you are), and your performance (which may take the form of bold new ambitions at home, at work, in love, or anywhere else in life–that part’s up to you).

We haven’t mentioned nutrition yet. In all of the courses following ARM 200, there will be specific nutritional programmes for you to follow. However, while you’re in this course, we’ll want you to eat whatever you want, as much of it as you want, whenever you want it. One catch: You’ll have to photograph what you’re putting into your body–every last drop and crumb–and show it to us.

Please: Don’t be shy–and don’t for one-second fool yourself into believing we haven’t seen it all before. (We most certainly have.) Honestly, even if you eat nothing but ice cream and potato chips, and even if you eat way too much of it, knowing that–especially if you can tell us what time you scarfed it all down–truly helps us understand your cravings, your digestion, sometimes even circadian-rhythm disturbances you would never have imagined. Which is terrific, because once we know what you’re dealing with, we can suggest some adjustments to have your body crave new things, at new times, in different ratios and proportions.

WHY IT’S WORTHWHILE

When we launched ARM 200, the first few people to whom we pitched it to were confused. I’d go so far as to say some of them were upset, angry, and/or incredulous. They couldn’t wrap their heads around what seemed to them like a whole bunch of talking, playing, dreaming, and measuring. What they were used to, and what they were expecting, was to jump right into hard-core, results-oriented training.

Feel the burn. No gain without pain. Nothing tastes as good as thin feels. So on and so forth. You get the picture: all that junk you see on Facebook, accompanied by fitness models so lean their reproductive systems have probably shut down.

But here’s the deal: Sometimes, what seems like “common sense” is objectively, provably, repeatedly wrong. That’s what each and every one of those bitter, hostile, suspicious clients learned. Yes, hard work, straight out of the gate, may make you feel good. It may help you feel proud, worthy, like a champ. But, if it happens in the absence of some preliminaries, it’s usually a waste of time.

What are those preliminaries? Brief but vital activities that should be familiar to and valued by any businessperson: orientation, research, insight, and strategy. During ARM 200, we won’t be using those exact terms. But, basically, that’s the process through which we’ll be taking you–and, I can’t say this enough, it works on a sustained basis, and that’s what counts.

Lest you think we always held these opinions here at ARM, let me tell you something: All of this is relatively new for us. Like everyone else, we used to think it was best to jump right in. Fortunately, training dozens if not hundreds of people from many different walks of life eventually taught us otherwise.

Here’s what we saw: Initial results were sensational–and they happened so quickly. Unfortunately, this was always followed by a phase of rapidly diminishing returns. (Sometimes injuries too.) Disenchantment came into the picture, as enthusiasm went out the window. Of course, objectives never got achieved, leading some clients to a sense of disappointment that took months or years to overcome. In a nutshell: not good. We refuse to let that happen to you–and, with this course, it won’t.

SOME OTHER THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW

To participate in ARM 200, you need to complete ARM 100 first–but that’s free, so no worries there.

If you want to train with friends, relatives, colleagues, whatever, let us know. Partner rates are extremely attractive–sometimes reducing tuition by up to 50%.

Speaking of tuition, three different types of scholarships are available. If you’re interested in applying for one, please let me know. I’d be more than happy to provide all the details.

You may also want to ask about our financing options. At most facilities offering personal training, financing comes at a cost, sometimes up to 50% more. We’re different. We want as many people as possible to start and complete our curriculum. So our financing plan–which involves set monthly payments over the course of your time with us–comes with a 15% discount built right in.

Finally, when you complete ARM 200, you’ll have the option of graduating to the month-long ARM 300: FOUNDATIONS & FUNDAMENTALS, where we help students correct, improve, and bring balance to their levels of mechanical, adaptational, and constitutional fitness.