Hi. My name is Tanner, and I used to have a pancake ass.

One cold morning, because Georgia is in the South but likes to act like it’s in the North sometimes, around 5:15am or so I walked into my locker room. My gym is what one would call a “health club” that resembles Globo Gym from the movie Dodgeball. We’ve got a TV in the locker room, comfy chairs, sauna, showers. The works.

I walk in, gym bag slung over my shoulders and about ready to start my long day of training when out of the corner of my eye I catch a naked man walking by. Now, this is nothing new in my gym. It seems as we get older our proclivity for walking around naked in public increases. Or we don’t give a damn. Something was shocking about this particular birthday suited fellow. He had no ass. A nonexistent ass. One in which a slight protrusion couldn’t even be detected.

I spend roughly 50 hours a week in a gym that’s almost identical to Globo Gym from the movie Dodgeball. That leads to seeing a lot of people do a whole lot of shit that makes me cringe. I inevitably hear from clients, chatter at the water fountain, or at the smoothie bar of the things people are doing outside the gym to help them lose weight that makes me go home cry myself to sleep. I’m here to set the record straight. Here are 6 ways people do fitness wrong.

Myth- Women should not lift weights, for they will immediately turn into She Hulk.

While it may be a cheesy motivational poster, it definitely gets the point across.

Since people started to take health and fitness seriously, women were relegated to the cardio areas. The treadmill, stair stepper, elliptical, and exercise bike were their tools and those alone. Women have every right to hang out around the iron though, and I say more of them should begin exercising that right.

Myth- You should not eat within 3 hours before bed, especially carbs, because it will be stored as fat.

Ryan Reynolds is a great looking dude. I’m comfortable enough with my sexuality to say so. I swoon over him everytime he graces the silver screen. For one of his roles (Blade Trinity) he got absolutely shredded. He looked lean and tight with abs that may or may not have made me question if I was really into girls. In an interview about his prep for the movie he mentioned his meal plan consisting of no eating within 3 hours before bed. He was not the first person to give this a go, and certainly won’t be the last. But is this eating style really the easiest way to get ripped? Hardly so.

Bro King Ryan Reynolds.

Myth – You need to spend hours a week grinding away with cardio for fat loss.

I see a lady nearly everyday at the gym. We’re gonna call her Matilda. Without fail when I walk into the gym I see Matilda just pounding away on the elliptical one day, the treadmill the next, and then if Matilda is feeling crazy she’ll hop on the stair climber.

Matilda cloned 20 times.

“I’ve been doing everything. I just can’t drop the weight. I’m pretty sure I just have a slow metabolism”

It’s inevitable. A minimum of 11 times a day in every commercial gym across the world, within it’s warm iron filled confines, someone will utter those words.

Any trainer has seen it and heard it all too often. Some of us even believe it with our clients. In theory it’s a great idea. You’ve been sweating like a pig to look like a fox, and it just won’t happen. You just want to be foxy, right? I mean who doesn’t. The best part of blaming your metabolism, is it’s not all your fault. Forget taking a hard look in the mirror. There’s some unseen force called the “metabolism” that most of us don’t even understand, preventing you from being foxy.

Does a slow metabolism actually exist in the real world?

I love debt.

I get into and out of debt every single day. You likely do as well, and have no idea.

Here’s the caveat. We’re not talking about financial debt. Though just like financial debt can be used in a healthy way to build your credit score, the debt I’m talking about can be used to build your fitness score.

Just like in the financial world, there are good kinds and bad kinds of debt in the fitness and nutrition world. Most everyone in the modern world is concerned with their financial debt. We monitor it and work to pay it down to build our credit score. So why don’t we monitor the levels of debt in other areas of our life?

I’m gonna do you a solid. I’m gonna show you how to take stock of your current levels of debt, see where you’re saddled with debt up to your eyeballs, and show you how to pay it down. You can thank me later.

If fall isn’t your favorite season of the year, you can GTFO. Seriously.

Ok, maybe not serious. But I love fall. I love the all pumpkin errythang attitude we have seemed to adopt. I dig fall styles that we have like scarves, coats, and riding boots. Yeah, riding boots aren’t just for girls anymore.

Fall is also a time when many of us fall right back into old habits. See what I did there? I’m soooo punny.

All jokes aside, fall comes at a strange, yet welcome time in the year. Over summer we wear as little clothing as possible, drink beer and grill out almost daily. While we can’t wait for summer to get here, by the end we need a break. We need all pumpkin errythang.

Fasting.

Ah fasting, the time honored tradition of starvation practiced via religious customs, hippies, and those attempting to take a stand against The Man.

When I first heard of fasting being practiced in the fitness world those exact things were what I thought about. I thought of Ghandi. While Ghandi may have been one of the most influential individuals in human history and a champion for human rights, his physique wasn’t the most admirable. So to hear that people all over are starting to incorporate fasting, and winding up with awesome physiques caused my brain to short circuit for a bit.

I’m pretty sure my first time was at about 15 or so. I was pretty new to everything and I was hanging out with some people who were older than me. They seemed so effortlessly cool. They didn’t struggle in talking to women, they were popular, and they were all huge.

So, naturally, I trusted them. Remember, I’m like 15 years old at the time. I’m gangly, super awkward, and puberty has left it’s mark by gracing me with acne the likes of which only a high school teenager can relate to.

Being cool was something I desperately needed. So I hung out with the older dudes. I did what they did. I

But, alas, I’m not talking about nose candy. Instead, we’re talking about creatine.