Hey Team

It’s FEBRUARY!  Well – it’s nearly February – which means it’s GO TIME!  I have been telling anyone who will listen for years that here in ‘Straya the world all starts to wind down around December 1st…and doesn’t wind back up until the Jan 26th holiday is in the rear view mirror.  Well – good news.  That’s now. So…LET’S GOI

I have to admit this is pretty much my favorite time of the year in the gym.  The weather is warm, everyone is enthusiastic about getting in some ‘fitness work’ (I mean, I 100% understand it gets to be a battle in the middle of a freezing cold July!) and the annual challenge is JUST ABOUT to start.  So everyone is making plans about what their year will look like, how they will ‘do better’…it’s just a really positive time of year and a fun time to be at Round 1.  

Now – I’ve made a LOT of changes to the 28-Days-Later challenge this year.  I know I blogged about this a couple of weeks back but in summary:

Before I go any further, for anyone who wants a link to sign-up to the challenge, well, here it is:  https://round1fitness.com.au/february-challenge/ 

Back to the changes I have mode, I’m going to say ‘Up-Front’ that I am always hesitant to try new things in the “28-DAYS-LATER” challenge.  I do tend to ‘play around’ a bit with the rules of the October Summer Slam but have tried to keep this February challenge pretty ‘rock-solid’ in terms of how it works/what the rules are/what is expected of each participant.  How come?  Well – it’s got a great record of just getting people results and when something isn’t broken, what would we be trying to fix (exactly??).

BUUUUTTTTTT – This year I’ve been thinking (a lot) about the ‘Less=More’ principles and have done a lot of thinking (and subsequently a lot of work!) on how I could both SIMPLIFY the challenge AND at the same time make it more ‘FLEXIBLE’ for those taking part.  I try to log peoples comments about things they like and things they don’t – and (of course) I have the weight loss/muscle gain results to use as input for the next year (and the year after that).  So this year I really decided to take a big step BACK with the 28-Days-Later challenge and create something that offered MORE solutions for people who wanted to participate and lose a few kilos in February.

Less = MORE really means “Do Less to achieve MORE!”

When you think about “Less = MORE” the easiest way for me to explain what I’ve been going for is to try and present it as an image.

If I were to give you an unbalanced scale and told you to balance it, what would you do?  Now – according to studies, most people would IMMEDIATELY add MORE weight to the higher side rather than simply subtracting weight from the heavier side. Essentially, we solve problems by ADDING rather than subtracting…and when I went and looked back at the history of the 28-Days-Later challenge over the past 9-years, we (well, ME) have added and added and added more and more and more ‘stuff’ to make it “BETTER”.  Now, I think all the extra stuff really HAS made the challenge ‘BETTER’ – but it has also made it a lot more intimidating and complicated than it was ever intended to be.  Remember, this challenge was conceived after I watched a movie about the Zombie Apocalypse…not exactly high art!

Is “complicated” a problem?  Or more correctly, has it become so complicated that it’s a problem??  Well – for a lot of people, not really.  But unfortunately the additional complexity and extra ‘WORK’ needed just to get started really can work against people when it comes to behavioral changes.  Because there has been so much DETAIL to get through – so much CONTENT to absorb – it can make everything just seem completely…insurmountable.  And this means when things get tough – and there is a time in EVERY challenge for EVERY participant where it gets hard (that’s why it’s caused a challenge!) then it makes it easier for participants to ‘give up’ than push ahead.

What’s an example?  Well…I have quite a few but I’ll give you TWO!  Now – these examples are NOT going to try and offer solutions – those will come later – but I want to let you know where my thinking has been!

A training example first.  Round 1 is a ‘group sessions’ based gym.  Our whole thing is that we are set up to train TOGETHER – the coach explains the work-out, the coach leads you through it…and you are able to take encouragement/inspiration from those around you.  Which is how the gym was originally conceived (and how it will stay).  BUT.  Then along comes the challenge and there are independent workouts you need to complete in order to ‘DO’ the challenge.  And there are confusing exercises and you might need to get right out of your comfort zone (like head up to the cardio room, or boxing people head into the strength gym)…and whilst I always do videos showing you how to do the extra workouts, well, that means finding time to watch them and then finding a spot in a crowded gym to do them and, it’s just too hard.  And – like I said above, despite best intentions, if it gets too hard it means there’s a chance of giving up!

A Food example next.  The food exclusion stuff should be SO simple – no bread, no pasta, nothing with added sweeteners and no alcohol.  But man oh man the confusion – and the stress this can cause.  Habits can be ‘baked on’ and for some people the idea of missing the sugar in their coffee or their pasta night Wednesday…it’s just too much.  I know this seems a bit contradictory (after all, we are LITERALLY just taking stuff away which should be easy) but if you have sandwiches for lunch every day and now you can’t eat bread…well, BIG PROBLEM!  So it gets too hard and people would (mostly) rather quit than ‘fail’!  SO…

Now I’ve tried to go through a couple of the changes I have made to the challenge to make participation and compliance EASIER (and therefore hopefully more EFFECTIVE) I wanted to go back to my ‘Less is MORE’ thinking.  Once again I want to try and use a couple of concrete examples so you guys can try and visualise what I’m talking about/what’s been going through my mind.

Here goes.  We have talked a lot come challenge time about the relative importance of sleep and how establishing a night-time routine to assist with sleep can be a real game changer for some people.  But when we set this up for the 2023 challenge – and it was all ‘great content’ – but it was also all about the ‘EXTRA’ stuff you could DO, the strategies you could TRY to help with this when probably the SIMPLEST and most effective thing to do would be to take something AWAY…I mean, making a herbal drink and taking some magnesium post dinner are great ideas…but simply putting down your phone and not answering work emails that are stress triggers after 8:30pm (or whatever arbitrary time you decide!) would probably be BETTER!  Subtraction > Addition!

Back to the challenge, when I was putting this new 2024 version put together this ‘new’ version of the challenge I really did try to take a ‘Less = More’ approach and I tried (really, I did!!) really put myself in the shoes of me the challenge PARTICIPANT (I have done every one so far so I think I’m qualified!) rather than me the person who designs the thing.  Basically, what we want with this challenge is to set up EVERY participant with a simple set of ROBUST tools they can use to ‘keep the train rolling’ once the formal challenge is over…and it is with that mindset that it has been designed. 

Back to my examples from earlier:

“The extras are hard, unfamiliar and confusing and make me uncomfortable…I don’t like doing them and it makes me not want to go to the gym or finish the challenge”.

This year, you can choose whether or not to do the extras!  Do more classes and less extras – or more extras and less classes.  Or do PT sessions and get credit for them.  We want you to understand that it really doesn’t matter EXACTLY what it is that you are doing – but we want you to be ACTIVE and MOVING.

“No bread and no pasta is just to hard in my house..  And I have to have sugar in my tea – I drink one cup a day…is it really that big a deal???”.

This year the option is yours to eat what you want when you want…BUT you need to record your food and track your calories.  So for those who don’t ‘WANNA’ change – but are happy to track, this year you can do that…we’ll simply weigh you in every week and if your weight has gone up, we will drop by 100-calories per day…if it has dropped/stayed the same, we will keep the target the same!  SIMPLE. 

When trying to ‘transform’ something – it is so easy to think about ADDING to the situation rather than focussing on ‘subtraction’.  I mean, once upon a time Australia had a problem with beetles in the sugar cane, and ADDED the Cane Toad to solve that problem.  This was incredibly ineffective AND turned a relatively simple problem into one that is now incredibly complex…The primary principle behind ”LESS IS MORE” thinking is that before you ADD something to a problem in order to fix it, first assess…can we make this SIMPLER/EASIER by removing an element or two…

So here we go.  28-Days-Later 2024.  A challenge that has been created with a ‘pathway to success’ in mind for everyone.

Let’s do this!

https://round1fitness.com.au/february-challenge/

See you in the gym,

Michael.