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.

Rare Golden Owl

Stop worrying about not being where you want to be right now.

The only people who have been entirely unaffected by gym closures over the past 3-6 months are those of us who have a gym set up at home. If this is you, gyms shutting down never mattered to you - your gym is at home.

For the rest of us, we have had to adapt our training.

Some of us have enjoyed the luxury of having equipment to train with at home. Some of us have had to do bodyweight only workouts. Some of us have not worked out at all.

All of these scenarios are okay, and they are all examples of us doing what we can to get by until our gym can reopen again.

Understand what you are working with and be realistic about where you are.

You haven’t had the things you typically rely upon to produce your desired training results.

You haven’t had weights.

You haven’t had your trainer/coach.

You haven’t had your training partners.

You haven’t had a gym atmosphere to motivate you.

If you’ve gone backward, it’s okay. So have I and many others. That’s just temporary.

If you’ve done enough just to minimize the amount that you’ve gone backward, you’ve done better than me and many others.

If you’ve maintained your level of fitness, you’re in a great spot, right in position to get back to pushing ahead again once things become a bit more normal.

If you’ve made any kind of progress at all, you’re a rare golden owl.

Wherever you’re at today, don’t be so hard on yourself. This will all be a blink of an eye over the course of your training career.

Busy Getting Out of Shape

How have the past five months of your 2020 been?

From a fitness standpoint, mine have been dreadful.

It wasn’t until recently,

(when I found myself fighting for air

as I sprinted at 5.5mph

to the end of my 50 yard long street

to meet the food delivery service driver who had trouble finding our address

to retrieve my order consisting of pizza + dessert pizza + cheese balls + mozzarella sticks)

that I realized how out of shape I had become.

A week earlier when I experienced physical struggles lifting boards and climbing ladders while building an extension to our deck could have also been a hint, but I must have just blamed that day on the heat.

Over the last five months, it seems I have only been motivated to do two things…

1. Break all of my old good habits

2. Develop new bad habits

Since mid-March, I relapsed on soda - something I had very proudly not had a drip of for over 5 years prior to that. I went periods of up to 3 weeks of no working out at all. 80% of my meals have been junk.

Up until last Thursday, I have not been worthy of considering myself a promoter of health/personal trainer/coach/member of society.

But since then, I have worked out 6 out of 7 days (matching, maybe even exceeding the # of times I worked out in July). My eating has not been perfect, but under control.

This has been the most consistent 7 days I’ve had since the virus hit.

I’ve got some momentum built up.

You’ll hear more from me moving forward now that I am busy getting in shape.

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.

Who You Lift With Matters

Yesterday during my workout I just didn't have it. I wasn't focused and felt myself getting distracted by other things. It led to it being a sub-par session.

A couple of hours later during my group class, I began working in amongst the class and quickly started to feel in the zone. It ended up being a great workout!

The only thing different from two hours earlier was the people I was with.

It reminded me how important your training environment is.

It is difficult to motivate yourself day after day when you are the only one who is there to push. 

When you are surrounded by people who are there with you to get after it you feed off of each other.

Thank you to everyone who let me lift with them last night - I needed it!