As you can tell, things have changed a bit around here.

The entire look and feel of the site is different, and for good reason.  Let me explain.

Have you ever seen a really good movie? You know, like Inception? Something where if you miss a single minute, you’re lost?

Imagine walking into said movie somewhere in the middle – you’d have no clue what’s going on! What’s worse, if you interrupted people who were trying to follow along themselves, you’d probably be treated pretty rudely and asked to be quiet.

I feel like the old site had a little bit of that.

If you had followed my writing from the early days, sure, you could follow along and know where I was going with things.

But what about new people?  What about people who were just getting into fitness and wanted to learn more?

I think the site was a little overwhelming for them.

Introducing the New and Improved RTS

The goal of my entire site is to teach people who want to learn about exercise how to do it in a safe and effective manner.  This could be fat loss, strength gain, bodybuilding, or anything in between.

I don’t care what your background is, or what your end-goal is, if you’re serious about your health, I want to help you.

If you’re new to the site…

If you’re brand new to the site, I would highly recommend starting off with the Eat, Train, Recover pages at the top.  These pages will give you a basic foundation for what strength training is all about, as well as how nutrition and recovery play into a balanced approach.

I feel like we spend far too much time talking solely about training.  It’s not just training, it’s being able to recover from training that’s most important!

New people may also want to get plugged into my network.  I’ve obviously got the shiny buttons on the right at the top for my RSS Feed, Twitter, Facebook and You Tube pages, but there’s also a scrolling marquee on the left hand side of the page as well.

If you do nothing else, be sure to sign-up for the newsletter. This is how I keep in touch with all of my loyal readers, and keep them up to speed with what’s going on.

Perhaps more importantly, you get immediate access to webinars, videos, and a bunch of other premium content I’ve created over the years.

If you’re new, this is the place to start. There’s a ton of content on the site, so try not to get overwhelmed. 🙂

If you’ve followed me for a while now…

For those of you that have been with me for a while, I think the site layout and navigation is much easier now.  Obviously we’ve still got the blog and articles, but now everything is much easier to find via the “Categories” widget on the right, and the “Search” function at the top.

Want to learn more about back pain?

Core training?

Fat loss?

All you have to do is either use the Categories widget or the search function and you’re off and running!

Another cool tool I’ve implemented is the “Related Posts” function.  If you enjoy a specific blog post, this tool will show you posts and articles that correspond nicely with the topic at hand. I’ve got quite a bit of information on the site, so again, if you’re really wanting to learn a lot about one topic, this could be the way to go.

You’ll also notice that each post now has a Social Bookmarking widget to the left as well.  Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon or Yahoo Buzz, social bookmarking can really help spread the word.

If you’ve hung around the site for a while, here’s all I’d ask:

Whether it’s now or later, if you guys come across content that helps you, or that you feel would help others, please help me spread the word.

Re-tweet something on Twitter.

Like something on Facebook.

Take 30 seconds to write-up an intro and post something on Digg.

I’m human like all of you, so the more positive reinforcement I get, the more I want to write and continue to create content. If you guys can help out on that front, that would be great!

The Future of RTS

While this is the current incarnation of the site, I think you’ll find it’s going to be a very dynamic thing over time.

I’m also going to be refining the menus, tweaking the layout, etc.

At the end of the day, the easier it is for you guys to read and navigate the site, the better.

Going forward, you can definitely expect more article-style blog posts like you’ve seen over the past couple of months.

I’m also going to make a shift to incorporate more video.  And not just random You Tube clips, but coaching videos that will help you or your clients get more out of your training program.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to take this thing to the next level.

And perhaps more importantly, I hope YOU enjoy the ride.  Because after all, if it wasn’t for you guys and your support, I wouldn’t be where I am today!

All the best

Mike

BTW – there are still TONS of people out there who don’t know about my site, or what I’m trying to do to educate people. If you could take a moment and Re-Tweet this or Like it on Facebook, I would really appreciate it.  THANKS!