Hey Team,
Thanks to everyone who made it down to a session or two last week. The mornings and nights are as cold and dark as they are going to be right now (tomorrow is the shortest day of the year) so if you can find your way out of bed/out from in front of the fire to get to the gym right now then you can do it ANY TIME.
For me…well…my own training has been a bit hit and miss lately. I have to say I’ve really been feeling the pinch with regards some stressful situations in life – neither gym work nor footy work have been particularly smooth sailing over the last month and during times of stress I find my workouts become a little less frequent AND a little narrower in focus. What do I mean by that? Well – I am usually not too bad in making some time to get out for a run, doing a standalone weights session, doing my maintenance stretching etc…but when I get stressed out all of that becomes ‘too hard’ and that means it is classes and nothing but classes…and as I have already said, I’ve been doing a few less of those than usual. Basically, it’s a viscous cycle!
I have been getting a few people asking me whether or not we are going to do another challenge – and my inclination was ‘NO’. It isn’t that we don’t “NEED” one as a group of gym goers…it was just that the challenges we run at the gym have simply become so BIG now. Putting together ‘28-Days-Later’ and ‘Summer Slam’ – both complete with 30+ recipes that need to be written out and tested out – not to mention creating and testing the challenge workouts and all of the other details that go into them – it is 100+ hours work to pull it all together and that’s BEFORE a single person signs up. I just kind of didn’t have it ‘in me’. But I took a look at some of the ‘simpler’ challenges we had done in years past – with particular reference to the recent (2020) #800gChallenge – and wondered if we couldn’t do something that would challenge EVERYONE to create some positive eating habits AND get in the gym a few times each week…without having to spend a few weeks putting it together. And the answer turned out to be…OF COURSE.
Hence the “Summer Bodies” challenge is now up and available for everyone to register.
Now – if you are wondering whether or not YOU should do it, well, my simple answer will always be (again), ‘OF COURSE’. I mean, I’m going to do it…so you should do it too! But I know that’s a bit simplistic so I have tried to make a list of a few ‘REALLY GOOD’ reasons to take on the ‘Summer Bodies’ challenge.
As I said at the top – it is pretty cold and wet out there these days. And whilst I think we all know that our gym sessions are conducted INSIDE, well, how hard is it to get through the winter blues? Your bed is warm. The fire is warm. Outside it is cold…and to get to the gym, you first need to go outside…it is handy excuse to make to yourself!
Well – there is nothing like a challenge to give that little “It’s too cold/dark” voice in your head a little bit of “how about you shut up…I still have two classes to get done this week!” The challenge makes you accountable for getting your sessions done, it gives you a tangible reason to get into the gym and no-one likes having to look at a challenge sheet with missing signatures!
For me, there are two GREAT things about a challenge. The FOOD rules and the EXTRAS. The classes I do 12-months of the year…but the extras? Not so much. So they are great…and every single time there is a challenge I find my paths crossing with someone who I wouldn’t normally train alongside…we are both working out at a ‘different’ time to normal to try and squeeze in the extras. New people, new conversations, new gym buddy…new person to hold you accountable to the NEXT week’s ‘EXTRA’ when you make plans to catch-up again!
Well – the funny part of a challenge is that – even though you are going to the same place and doing the ‘same’ thing…it somehow just SEEMS different. This feeling is almost impossible to describe but when the challenge is on it all just FEELS somehow more important. And the “EXTRA” workouts? I mean, they suck but they are unfamiliar and put you out of your comfort zone…and as an added bonus, these ‘blasts’ of change can really help push you past any plateaus you might have been experiencing in your workouts.
I know that it doesn’t seem possible? But it is! The main reason that so many people sign up for challenge after challenge is that they really are fun. I guess a lot of this comes back to a point I made earlier – somehow during a challenge the workouts just FEEL more important…and because of that it really provides a sense of purpose/accomplishment with every session that gets ‘signed off’. And sure, there are always ‘stupid’ rules to make things more difficult…and that all adds to the fun/sense of achievement. You KNOW when you have got to the end that you have achieved something that is just a little bit out of the ordinary.
Now – none of this is to say that the challenges (and this “Summer Bodies” challenge in partcular – isn’t going to be hard work. It 100% is. But it is going to be hard work and fun – and those people participating really will be making the most of their memberships/working towards great outcomes at a time of year when it is otherwise pretty tricky to just maintain the ‘status quo’.
You can sign-up for the ‘Summer Bodies’ challenge here:
https://round1fitness.com.au/2021-summer-bodies-challenge-is-g-o/
See you in the gym,
Michael.
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