Better Than Consistency

Consistency is important.

We all know that a specific fitness goal cannot be reached without it.

But a sitting rock is consistent, yet the rock doesn’t do anything other than stay put.

And doing the same exercises, at the same weights, for the same number of sets week after week is consistent, but one will only get better at doing those exercises, at those weights, for those number of sets.

So we need to take consistency a step further.

We must build momentum.

Momentum is consistent, and it is also on the move. It works to move you from where you are toward where you want to be.

The good news is that momentum is quite easy to initiate.

Start with something, and do more of it, or do it better the next time.

It doesn’t matter at what point you start, so long as you strive for more than just consistency.

It Came Quickly

It is a new year, and if three days ago you planned to establish new and healthier lifestyle habits in 2023, hopefully, things are off to a good start for you.

But it’s possible that despite your good intentions, life got in the way and you got distracted, so things are off to a less-than-ideal start.

Instead of having your meals prepped for the week, you skipped lunch, and right now you are pulling out of the drive-through with your mid-afternoon snack. As you turn around to toss your Burger King wrapper in the back seat, you astonishingly realize that you forgot to pack your gym clothes!! 😱😱😱

Should you give up altogether on eating healthier and trying to make regular gym-going a part of your life?

Of course not.

Just make sure that your next meal is a better choice than the Double Whopper you just devoured. Try to improve each meal from your previous one until you stumble upon the type of meal that is sustainable and that aligns with your goals.

People join gyms every day of the year. Why did you think you needed to join one on January 1st or on the first Monday of the year?

If you cannot get to a gym to work out today, see if you can make it tomorrow.

As for today, here is something active you can do from home that will take you less time than you spend getting through your IG feed…

Do 20 squats, then hold a :30 plank. Then do 19 squats, then hold a :30 plank. Then 18 squats followed by a :30 plank. Continue this pattern down to 1 or whenever you need to stop.

Happy New Year!

You're a Child

As a parent, you work hard to teach your children good behavior, and you expect them to display it even when you’re not around.

A frustrating situation to deal with is when you notice your child being influenced by sources that lead to behavior that doesn’t align with your expectations.

Imagine how the version of yourself - the one who works hard to find time to exercise and takes time to plan out meals - must feel when other versions of you choose to stray from that course and instead reinforce lifestyle habits that make goal-reaching much more difficult.

The Simplest Day

Day one.

Day one of working out. Day one of eating better. Day one of a new training program.

Day one can come in many forms.

I recently had a day one.

In the months prior to my day one, I was inconsistent with my health and fitness. My workouts were sporadic and I wasn’t watching what I ate.

I decided I needed to have a day one.

Things were heavy that day.

The weights were.

My breathing was.

But despite my out-of-shape-ness, on day one I felt calm and focused.

I knew it was a simple day.

There was no pressure to outperform myself from days in the past.

There was no pressure to rush and get through a menu of items for the day.

Instead, I was able to concentrate on the simple task at hand - lay down some habits I could continue with, and some numbers that I could improve upon in the coming days, weeks, and months.

On day one, we don’t have to do anything extraordinary, we just have to do something. After day one is when we work on doing things more and more extraordinarily.

Don’t complicate a simple day.

You're Not In Control

Your body will change when it is ready to.

You don’t have a say in when your goal weight is reached.

You don’t get to determine on which Monday you will hit your next bench PR.

So don’t get upset when you weigh in .7 pounds heavier than you did last week.

Don’t become frustrated when you can barely hit 6 reps with a weight that just last week you took to 8.

Your body doesn’t make sense.

And even worse, your body is the one in control.

So be prepared to be confused with what’s going on with your fitness.

Be prepared to be disappointed, often.

That is - if you’re too wrapped up in the results you are being presented.

If you’re putting in more effort tracking your daily weigh-ins than you are figuring out how you can continue compiling more and more days of what you have been doing, you’re focused on the wrong thing.

Because chances are, what you have been doing - are the right things.

You just have to do those ‘right things’ for longer.

(PLOT TWIST)

It should bring you comfort to know that you actually are in control. You’re just not in control the way you’d like to be.

You indirectly are in control of the results you desire.

You can’t walk into the gym on any random day and add 20lbs to your bench.

But you can walk into the gym, day after day, and put in the work that is necessary to add 20lbs to your bench.

Focus on your daily habits and actions, not the results.

What you do day after day is what brings the results along for the ride.

Be disciplined to not feed off of results, feed off the process.

Replicate

What have you done before that you wish to do again?

Demonstrate somethings possibility, and it will always be there for you to go back to.

If you have lost 15lb before, you can lose 15lb again.

If you have lifted 300lb before, you can do it again.

If you have pulled yourself up from tough circumstances before, you can do it again.

Maybe it will require a different path.

Or maybe all you will need is to replicate your process.

What You Think Is Long-Term, Is Actually Short-Term

The calendar year is already halfway over, and most of you reading could agree that 2019 is going by pretty fast.

Back in January, June seemed far away.

Some of us may have set a goal to lose a certain amount of weight.

Some of us may have set a goal to add pounds to the weight we can lift.

Setting out to lose 20lb. or to add 20lb. to your squat in 6 months is more difficult than it looks on your calendar.

Failing to reach these types of goals is frustrating, but do remember that half-a-year’s time is actually a short amount of time - it’s already June 2019, remember?

There is nothing wrong with chasing short-term goals, and really, most of the goals you will have will be short-term. Just don’t confuse long and short, and expect to see long-term results in a timeframe that is surprisingly short-term.

If you didn’t lose the 20lb. you hoped to by June, maybe you lost 12.

If you didn’t add 20lb. to your squat, maybe you added 12.

That’s on pace to make a 24lb. difference in a year…

still a short-lived amount of time.

The Source of Your Goals

The goals you set out to achieve don’t just happen.

A process must be followed in order for you to reach them.

The process always trails back to your mentality.

You must stay positive.

Every single negative thought you have will affect your process in a bad way.

And a negative outlook on the process can develop quickly.

Much quicker than a positive one.

A positive outlook takes work to build.

Negative influence will come from yourself and it will come from others.

It will come daily.

You must be ready to kill it the very moment it tries to enter your mind.

First, do you believe in yourself that you can attain the goal?

You should.

You have to.

If you don’t, you will be pounded into the ground with self-doubt. You will let what others think and say about you hold you back. You’ll never even give yourself a chance from the start.

In addition to protecting yourself against your own self-destructive thoughts and from other people’s pessimism, you’ll have to train yourself to deal with day-to-day impulses and discouragements.

Are you going to be mentally disciplined enough to order the right thing from the menu, or will you succumb to ordering the burger basket?

Are you going to be mentally tough enough to push all the way through five reps (when the first three felt amazingly difficult), or will you quit and let the temporary discomfort win the battle?

If your visual body inspection doesn’t turn up the results you expected, will stay on track and order a salad from the menu, or will you give up on the process and go for the burger basket this time?

Will you be patient enough to keep drilling and fine-tuning your bench press (even though you’ve been stuck at the same weight for 6 months), or will you even begin to think to yourself that this will never get better?

Thinking to yourself that your bench press will never improve, or thinking to yourself that your body isn’t changing for the better is exactly what you need to avoid.

These thoughts are negativity.

These thoughts are going to happen.

There are going to be times that you feel you are making no progress.

There will be times that you question if you’re even going in the right direction.

This is when you find out where your mind is at.

This is your opportunity to improve your mindset.

It’s what you need to reach your goal.

Training Yourself

At one point, you were taught how to do every single thing you know how to do.

Once you were taught something, you had to train yourself to become better at it.

You trained yourself to brush your teeth.

You trained yourself to tie your shoes.

You know that you must train to get stronger. To build muscle. To lose body fat.

To be able to lift 100 pounds, you have to train yourself to do it.

At first, it might be challenging to lift 50 pounds. But you know you’ll never get to 100 if you don’t keep training.

So you keep training, and eventually you are able to lift 100 pounds.

Whatever it is that you start but always have trouble sticking to, happens because you are not approaching it as training.

On day one, two, and three of your diet you may have no trouble staying on track. But at the end of week one, and into week two is when things begin getting difficult.

You think to yourself that this just “sucks,” but it is really that you are right in the heat of training.

This is how it should feel. And it should feel like this for a while. For a lot longer than you think it should.

You have to train yourself to be disciplined.

You have to train yourself to eat right.

You have to train yourself to drink more water.

You have to train yourself to get enough sleep.

It will never be easy to lift heavier and heavier weight.

It will never be easy to run faster or to jump higher.

Don’t expect being able to eat the right things or being able to avoid eating the wrong things to be easy.

That is training.

You Won't Get Big On Accident

In my experience as a personal trainer, it has always been difficult to convince some people to train with weights.

Many people have come to me over the years believing that lifting weights is dangerous and that it is sure to make them look like The Incredible Hulk within 2-weeks time.

Actually, it’s far more dangerous to go through life not lifting weights than it is to lift weights.

And it is extraordinarily difficult to look anything like The Incredible Hulk.

The fact is that most people that ARE TRYING to get big, can’t even get big.

It’s very audacious of anyone to think that they might start to look “too bulky” by accident.

***It takes years and years of frequent, consistent, and sufficiently intense weight training to build muscle***

The majority of people who are concerned with getting too bulky will never train for enough years, will never train frequently or consistently enough, and because of their misinformed belief that they’ll probably get too big from this stuff, will never train at high enough intensities to risk getting anywhere near the dysmorphic size they fear they’ll become. So there’s one more reason not to worry.

I don’t encourage weight training to firmly impose my training style and goals onto others. It really doesn’t matter what your goal is. I already know you should train with weights.

Properly utilizing the weights will support any training goal.

If you want to slim down, you should lift weights.

The weights won’t make you bigger, it’s other things you’re doing that may.

By the way, not all exercise that includes weights is “weight training”. If you’re using a weight for a set of 8 that you could really do 15 times, you aren’t lifting weights, you are quite literally wasting your time (go back and find the ***).