Boxing Blog

    Lead us not into TEMPTATION (OR at least get temptation out of the house!).

    Hi Team,

    Thanks for coming along to the gym in such awesome numbers last week.  Did you know we had more than 200 people participate in classes alone before 10am on Monday?  That is completely crazy.  100%, completely crazy.  Once upon a time I used to dream of a day where the ‘total’ attendance at the end of the day would be 200…to think that we achieved that with TEN (10) classes still to run is simply amazing.  I have to say, it was a really fun class as well – Loz did an awesome job in putting the week together for the boxing peeps.

    Speaking of Lauren, the Muscle Focus Massage Yoga sessions are now one-week in and – if you are keen to participate – you can book in here:

    https://www.musclefocusmassage.com.au/book-online/yoga/book

    Sessions are $15 each and there is a maximum of 10-people per session.

    Righto – before I start on this week I want to let everyone know that I have a little mini-blog coming in a few days about the City-to-Surf and an ‘Enduro-Strength’ program I have been working on.  When I send it out, if you think you might be keen, please SPEAK UP (via email!).  I am keen to add an endurance stream to the gym – Box/Strength/Endurance – to cater for all of those keen runners and cyclists out there, but I don’t want to waste a heap of time on something people aren’t interested in…so if you ARE keen, please step forward when asked or it will die a death before it gets off the ground.

    🙂

    Now, I know I have been cranking out some extra blog posts etc due to the challenge…and I know that not EVERYONE is doing the challenge…but when you ARE (like me) it is hard to get your head around that exact point (that not everyone is).  So today is again going to be a bit of a challenge oriented post about one thing specifically – TEMPTATION.

    I have been reading a book this week (I actually have 4 on the go right now as I am trying to finish 75 books during 2020 – this WAS going well…now not so much) and the one I am going to talk about today is called ‘Profit First’ by Michael Michalowicz.  (It’s awesome and maybe if I do more than just read it I *might* be able to move the gym from struggling to simply ‘surviving’.  Anyway, if you have a business it is a great read – as for me taking any meaningful action, well, we’ll see!)

    In it though – he talks about ‘removing temptation’. And he isn’t talking about the temptation to do something ‘BAD’…he is talking about the temptation to fall into old habits/bad habits and how the ONLY way to do that is to make sure that following those ‘OLD/BAD’ habits is really, really, really hard.  I will come back to this.

    Temptation has been around since the beginning of the earth when – if you are a believer at least, Adam and Eve partook in the fruits of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Now, they had been forbidden to eat the fruit – which I have to say looks pretty amazing in every single artists impression I have ever seen and was, like, RIGHT THERE – but Satan tempted them and they ‘gave in to temptation’.  Thinking about my own life, I suspect the influence of Satan must be strong because of all the time I think it would be a good idea to eat peanut butter ice-cream and drink beer…surely that is SATAN because I wouldn’t come up with those ideas myself?  Right?

    Anyway, I looked up temptation in the dictionary because funnily enough it seems I have never been ‘tempted’ to do things that are good.  Don’t get me wrong – I have DONE good things and I have thought about potentially doing good things but then just didn’t do them…but I wasn’t really feeling ‘tempted’ in the way that when I am ‘tempted’ by chocolate I feel like I just keep thinking about it for AGES…anyway, this this is what it says;

    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/temptation

    the wish to do or have something that you know you should not do or have:

    something that makes you want to do or have something that you know you should not:

    Even the EXAMPLES they give seem like they apply to the challenge (well, and my day-to-day life) and I didn’t even have to make this up though I DID feel the need to add a bit of extra commentary.  So, here are the examples from the Cambridge Online Dictionary:

    I’m afraid I succumberd to temptation and had a piece of cheesecake (which would never happen to me because cheesecake is slimy and gross but I admit that other people seem to enjoy it).

    I FINALLY surrendered to temptation and ate the last remaining chocolate (which makes me laugh a little because when chocolate is opened in my house there is never any that is ‘remaining’.)

    It’s very easy to yield to temptation and spend too much money.  (Did I mention the new wall ball targets that will be arriving in the strength gym soon?  I guarantee they were a BARGAIN though!).

    The temptation to take more food than you need.  (Again, need is a bit of a virtual concept and if there is an extra piece of steak just sitting there then I probably NEED to eat it!).

    Now, in the book (remember that) he talks about being ‘tempted’ to use money that SHOULD be used for one thing for something else entirely.  Now, the ‘something else’ might be perfectly valid…but that kind of isn’t the point.  The money for one thing is the money for one thing and you shouldn’t ‘take with the left hand and give with the right’…so in HIS example, the ‘rainy day accounts’ are maintained at a bank with no online ‘debit’ access (you can deposit, but you cannot withdraw).  If that sounds inconvenient, well, I’m just getting started.  He ALSO says that they only way you can access that cash should be ‘IN PERSON’…and he recommends that the branch where it is be at least ‘2-hours away’….Now that is putting a BIG roadblock in the way of temptation.  A 2-hour drive – well, 4-hours when you consider you would have to drive HOME – is not going to be undertaken UNLESS you really, really need it.

    Of course, that seems excessive to me but I do get the point.  The easiest way to avoid temptation when it comes to food is to simply not have the ‘bad stuff’ in your house.  You are 100000000% more likely to eat chocolate located in the fridge of your house than you are to drive to the shop at 9pm in order to buy some (10000000% is an approximate estimate).  Equally, you are 10000000% more likely to eat a leftover piece of chocolate cake than you are a leftover plate of broccoli.  And if you are “HUNGRY”, either would be fit for purpose.

    The point (of course) is that if you don’t want to give in to temptation…REMOVE IT.  I know this isn’t a new concept and I know I am going to hear the ‘But I need those chips/chocolates/etc for school lunches’…and I just want you to think about that for slightly more than 2-seconds.  If that stuff isn’t good for you, it 100% isn’t good for your kids.  And NO, I don’t want them growing up with an unhealthy attitude towards food so I understand that they need to know it is OK to indulge sometimes…but I think we all need to understand that when something is a ‘sometimes food’, well, you don’t get to have it after dinner every night or in your lunch box every day.  Personally I would do a deal where once per week the kids got the snack of their choice – and make a big deal about letting them choose it – but outside of that, well, it’s all about the fruit and chicken + salad wrap.

    We get tempted by stuff all the time that isn’t optimal for our performance or even our stated goals – I talk to people every day who are tempted by they allure of the ‘SNOOZE’ button (an old fighters saying is that “It’s hard to get out of bed at 5am when you are sleeping on silk sheets” and the snooze button is, to me, the modern equivalent of silk sheets!) and to be honest, giving “IN” to temptation isn’t a crime…it is human.  The only way around it is to REMOVE IT from your life…or at least make it really, really inconvenient to access.

    See you in the gym,

    Michael.

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