Happy Sunday Everyone,
I hope you have all enjoyed some downtime this weekend. I know I had my first day back coaching yesterday (well, first day back coaching footy) and somehow between work yesterday morning, junior basketball after that, footy at lunch time, work this morning and then a guitar lesson as well, it feels like I need a weekend to recover from my weekend…not only that, cranking out 2-3 blogs per week whilst the challenge is ‘on the go’ has had me staring long and hard at a blank screen for the last 30-minutes or so what follows below could be interesting!
Before I start, one thing I am pretty determined to do this year is get some new member profiles up on the website. If you are interested in participating and sharing YOUR story – they really do help other people ‘get started in making a change’ – then please email me at ‘info@round1fitness.com.au’ with “I WANT TO DO A PROFILE” as your title…it is a pretty simple questionnaire to fill out and only takes a few minutes.
As a few people know, we are (rapidly) coming up on the 10th anniversary of the gym and this has had me doing (a lot) of soul searching and thinking and planning and un-planning and replanning and thinking and soul-searching and, well, you get the idea. 10 years is a long time and it feels like a mile-stone of sorts. I think it is pretty fair to say that the journey of creating the gym from nothing to hopefully something has been a pretty volatile one – certainly it has caused chaos in my life, of that there is no doubt. What’s my overall thoughts in looking back? Well, I never realised it before I opened Round 1 but I used to like the parts where I got actually paid to go to work – that was good in retrospect. And I liked the bits where if I was sick I could take a day off, and that if I wanted to go away on holiday every now and again I could go…But overall it has been a positive…and I like to think we have helped some people…and I still like to think we try every day to help people. The idea when we opened the gym was “We Help Change Lives” and I think that is still pretty front and centre in 2020.
It’s a pretty messy think though – having a gym. To quote one of my favourite sayings from footy, “There are a lot more kicks up the backside than licks of the ice-cream” and it oftentimes feels that the universe (well, the gym universe) allows you to think you are having just a little bit of ‘pseudo-success’ so that it can remind you rather harshly that you are in fact one big massive failure…but riding the peaks and troughs whilst still trying to keep a positive outlook and somehow pay all the bills is I guess what life has been for 10-years now. I would compare it to a roller-coaster if at least once each day the roller coaster turned into a bucking bronco and actively tried to throw you off. Plus, I don’t really like heights so I don’t really like roller coasters!
Like I said – the journey has been (and continues to be) a volatile one. And when I think about it from a business perspective, I can’t help but think that the same principles (hardships??) apply to each and every one of us in our training (and eating!) lives. We all head along to the gym for the first time full of nervous energy and BIG hopes and dreams. This keeps us going – well, most people – for somewhere around 8-12 weeks, at which point the realisation starts to hit…”This is not going to be a quick fix. This is a life-style. I need to be consistent with my training and my food not until the end of the week/month/year, but for the rest of my life!” And THAT is a hard pill to swallow/hard concept to get your head around. For what it’s worth, I also need to swallow that training pill, as well as the ‘business’ pill which says things like “You don’t have to write this blog every week until the end of the month/year, but you have to write it every week for the rest of your life…’. Multiply that by 1000 for all of the other seemingly bs tasks that I never EVER thought I would have to do fill my ‘To Do’ list every week…
Now that’s motivation for ya! Sometimes you have to laugh at stuff like this – the world of training and diet AND BUSINESS are the same in that it really is ‘put in effort…rinse, repeat’…Lucky for all of us though, there is fun and learning hidden amongst the doom and gloom!
10 years. Which means this ‘gym journey’ has been in what I would call ‘The MIDDLE’ for the last 9 and a half years (I mean, the first 6-months were a chaotic blur of what are we even doing!). Which means 9 and a half years of learning and fun and friendships and stories to tell and – really – 9 and a half years of LIFE. I mean, there are times for all of us in our ‘gym lives’ where we get lost…and even worse, times when we lose hope. For me, that has been losing hope that we will be able to ‘ride out’ whatever financial trauma has hit us (the music licensing fiasco is the latest one!)…I guess for everyone training at the gym, losing hope that “IT” is never going to “HAPPEN” – be ‘IT’ losing weight or getting strong or doing pull-ups or any one of a million other things. But no-one ever got anywhere by just giving up and – after all – whatever the scales say, no-one ever suggested for a second that getting in a bit of exercise alongside your friends 3-4 times per week was bad for you in any way.
One thing I have learnt in nearly 10 years at the gym is that the most successful people simply ‘stick at it’ the longest. They follow a consistent training rhythm – 3-4 sessions each week, 12-months of the year. If they are sick or overly tired, they take a day off. If they have an injury – they still train but they modify and substitute – they maintain their positive habit. When they need too, they go to the physio or see a massage therapist (and now I guess they take the initiative with a pre-emptive strike by doing yoga!)…They 100% enjoy a fun social life but they do their absolute best to eat like adults 12-months of the year – you know, the whole ‘Cookies are a sometimes food (and wine is a sometimes drink!)’ mentality…rinse, repeat.
I like to think we have created a positive gym environment with no B.S. – no staring at mirrors, no selfies, no show-offs, no crop tops, no intimidation – that provides great, instructor led workouts at fair prices to our clients. I’m sure some days – as always – in both business and the gym, will continue to be better than others and that motivation for all of us will ebb and flow…but as long as I remember that being consistent is important for the gym and each of you guys remember that being consistent is the #1 important thing for your training, well…I reckon it is all going to be alright.
Oh one last thing – Good luck to the challenge peeps with the last FIVE (5) days…weigh-ins are next Saturday and the ‘sign-up’ sheet will be available from WEDNESDAY MORNING!
See you in the gym,
Michael.
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