Happy Sunday Team,
Thanks – as always – to everyone who got in a few sessions over the last week. I know it is getting pretty hard right now with the weather oscillating between super hot and super humid – PLUS half of us are suffering from sugar deprivation (not to mention alcohol deprivation) due to the challenge – PLUS the sessions have been really tough. What can I say – it never seems to get any easier.
Being consistent with your training (and your food as well of course – but I wanted to stick to the training story today) really is about leaning heavily on your ‘good habits’ to get you through the tough times. What are the ‘tough times’? Well, the tough times can take all sorts of forms! But if I was to summarise the ‘categories’ of ‘tough times’, they would be:
Injury, Time, Circumstance and the classic of all time, ‘Motivation’.
Injury
It is tough when you are battling from an injury that just makes things seem a little bit harder than they should be. It could be something similar like some knee or shoulder pain – it could be something a little more serious that you are undergoing treatment/awaiting for surgery for. But the moment you put it in the too hard basket – the moment you start missing your ‘regular’ sessions rather than just working around your injury? – well, that is the moment in time which is going to cause you to rebuild that good exercise habit FROM SCRATCH. To me it is a really simple equation – if you miss a session due to your ‘sore knee’ once, well, you are going to miss another one for that same reason in the future because you have ALREADY given yourself permission to do so.
Time
Time is the challenge – and can often be tied to the next one (circumstance). Time gets taken away due to all sorts of reasons (kids, work, partners work, kids, new hobbies, old hobbies etc). Ultimately though, the ‘TIME’ reason ends up meaning something other than time. It means ‘priorities’. Which really means that maintaining your health/fitness levels is simply not as important to you as it once was.
There is always time for things that are important. ALWAYS. If being active and staying fit and healthy is one of the things that you consider to be important, then you will continue to get to the gym and get your training done ‘no matter what’. Where I find it goes ‘wrong’ for people when it comes to time is usually more related to ‘convenience’. As in, it was convenient for me to come to the gym on the way home from work – but now I have to do ‘x-y-z’ with the kids after work. Which means I would have to come in the morning…and that means I have to get up early…and I don’t want to do that. The time is there – the gym has classes running at 4:50am and again as late as 7:45pm. But the time-slot that you had bought into, the time-slot that suited your life – has been taken away…
I have really battled with this issue myself since COVID. First, my lunch-time sessions – which is when I have trained for 9+ years – were taken since the gym hours changed and I was running those classes. So I started training at 9:35am. But THEN, we started running simultaneous classes in Boxing and Funk at that time…so again, I had to work. And I cannot train on the weekends (working in the gym) which leaves nights…the time I have always set aside to do my PT sessions. It has been a real mess – thankfully I now have the flexibility to train at 2x lunchtimes each week…Leon now joins me at 10:30am on a Monday and we do the class by ourselves…it’s hard. But I am generally finding a way to get 4-5 done each week by taking the “I better do it now – I wont get another chance” approach. All I can say is it’s bloody hard doing classes when you are there running them all the time and being flexible is key.
Circumstances
Circumstances is the 100% hardest thing to overcome. Moving house? Anything more than 20minutes makes it hard. Moving workplaces? Again – if you came before/after work, makes it hard. The big challenge you have with things like this is honestly identifying whether it is external circumstances that have caused ‘the problem’ or if it is a time/motivation related issue? If the circumstances are ‘genuine’, then you should take immediate action – change your training plan to one that is less of a compromise. The trainers are here to support you with this stuff…there are online programs available from our gym and we would love to assist you here.
Motivation
Last of all – the big question of motivation. I have said a million times that motivation lasts for 2-seconds…maybe 3. Good habits – training at consistent times, catching up with your gym buddies, having a bit of a training ‘focus’ are the things that get you through when times ‘get tough’. This is easy for me to say because I can obviously use the entire gym whenever I like, but having full access to both Boxing and Strength sides of the gym can really help here. It means that those days when you want to go to the gym but are just ‘’over’ the cardio smash that is coming in the daily boxing class, well, you can slide next door and do Functional. Or you can go and use the amazing Hammer Strength gear and do a circuit.
I have to admit, I kind of watch everyone who sticks to ‘one side’ of the gym (be it boxing or strength) and I wonder why they are limiting themselves. Yeah – OK – I get there is a $ question there, but just opening your horizons can provide such a mental break. Personally I find that I probably do 3x boxing sessions for every 2x strength sessions (it has been a bit different this calendar year, but that is about right since the strength gym opened) and that seems/feels pretty balanced. Add in a run or two, maybe a hammer strength circuit…I feel pretty good. And I avoid that ‘again’ feeling that I hear around the gym from time to time. You know, the ‘Are we doing power cleans AGAIN?’ that gets thrown up in the middle of a power clean strength block in funky.
Anyway – this wasn’t supposed to be a lecture though thinking back (I dare not re-read this stuff I write!) it probably comes across as one. I guess what I am saying is there are a number of things that get in the way of your health and fitness journey, and that to me they can be split into 4x main categories – Injury, Time, Circumstances and Motivation. Each of these all needs a different strategy to overcome – and NONE of them need be ‘terminal’ if you just take the time to look at what is ‘REALLY’ going on, decide where being ‘fit and healthy’ sits on your priority list…and take action accordingly. Maybe you need to become a morning person? Maybe you need to become an evening person. Maybe – like me – you need to ‘roll with it’ from day-to-day whilst always keeping your eye on the ‘end game’.
Either way, the gym is there to help. The challenges are awesome for keeping you on track…outside of them, talk to the trainers, identify some little mini-goals (performance ones are best) and get out after it.
See you in the gym,
Michael.
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