Hey Team,
Welcome to another Sunday.  Well – it’s actually Saturday but given my schedule tomorrow if I’m writing a blog it had better be NOW!  Before starting, I wanted to say a big thanks to everyone who has gotten into the gym over the past week – some awesome sessions have been going on that’s for sure.  Personally I’ve been missing my boxing classes – unfortunately this stupid egg sized lump on my wrist never gets angrier than after a boxing class or padwork session…and since I have been reluctant to give up doing padwork in the morning I’ve had to move my training sessions out of the boxing gym into the strength gym on a bit of a ‘semi-permanent’ basis right now.  I’ll eventually get this wrist looked at properly/get the problem sorted but for now I’m on a diet of strength classes…

I wrote a blog a couple of weeks back all about how “it’s the step you don’t want to take that can make all the difference” (if you missed it you can check it out here:  https://round1fitness.com.au/the-next-step-is-bigbut-its-the-one-you-need-to-take/).  Anyway, the premise was that for so many of us, the ONE THING we don’t want to do in our health and fitness life is that same ONE THING that would make the biggest difference to our performance and our outcomes.  For example, for someone in the gym every day, that ‘one-thing’ might be taking a bit more serious look at your daily calorie intake.  Or for boxing people, it might be adding one strength session per week…or vice versa for strength peeps…I’m sure you get it.  Anyway, I’ve been thinking heaps about that post over the past few weeks and I’ve got another idea!

I do a few group exercises with my footy boys each year – but a couple in particular stand out to me as having REAL relevance coming on the back of the ‘one-thing’ concept I referred too a couple of weeks back.  The first of these is called a ‘Faces in the Crowd’ exercise.  I am going to try and translate it to a ‘health and fitness’ scenario as best as I can…it works like this.

You sit in front of a blank piece of paper – the scenario you are imagining is that you are sitting in the ‘grand-stand’ observing YOU going about your day.  What things do you see yourself doing  well?  What about some of the things you aren’t doing quite so well?  What decisions are you making that contribute towards you moving forward?  What decisions are holding you back?  Have you got the balance ‘right’?  There is a little bit of “judge not, lest ye be judged” about this when you are sitting back assessing the actions of others…but when you are looking at “YOU”, well…The mere act of positioning yourself as an OBSERVER and allowing ‘the game’ (aka your day) to play out in front of you can be really powerful in allowing you to see what decisions/actions are having a positive/negative impact on outcomes.

The second exercise I think transfers really well to ‘gym life’ – and I call it the ‘Time Machine’.  To get started, you need to take a bit of a leap of faith – not only do Time Machine’s exist, BUT you are lucky enough to have access to one.  When you jump into the time machine, you set the dials to take you back to a time in your life when you want a ‘DO OVER’!  Now, whilst you could use it to side step those unfortunate ‘MAJOR’ life mistakes (you know, wedding vows, those discussions with your partner about the positives of having kids etc) in this case you have set it for a time when you were really ‘battling’ to get your ‘health and fitness’ stuff on track.  When you get back there – stop and take a look around.  

The setup is much the same as for the ‘Faces in the Crowd’ exercise in that once again to get started you just need a pen and a blank piece of paper.  Grab them and when you jump out of the Delorean (aka the time machine) have a bit of a ‘look around’.  What can you see?  What stuff happened that was impacting on your ability to stay on track?  In retrospect, could you have worked around them a little more effectively?  If the same thing was to happen THIS week, would you be able to do something differently to better ‘handle’ the situation?  

It isn’t all about the ‘bad’ stuff of course?  When you look around, what are you noticing that you did really well?  What people were there supporting you?  What POSITIVES can you take from the situation that you might be able to leverage if things ‘become difficult’ again in the future??

Using observational activities like this to put yourself in the ‘Birds Eye’ seat – with the faces in the crowd exercise relating to your ‘current’ day to day, and with the ‘time machine’ activity with difficult times experienced in the past – really does give you the opportunity to gain some perspective on what is happening, what is going on and what (of course) you could potentially be doing better.  Remember though, there is no point coming out of an activity like this with bruises because you have been nothing but critical…that doesn’t help.  Be sure to give credit and recognition where it is deserved and try to identify a couple of opportunities where things could be done/could HAVE been done a little differently.

Anyway – that’s it for this weekend!

See you in the gym,

Michael.