What in the hell am I talking about with this title?
Well first I want to say before I get into this that this article is easily the most important one I have written yet.
This problem is so incredibly pervasive in the health & fitness community and I see no signs of it getting any better.
Even worse, this problem is symbolic of a growing issue of lack of direction and attention that many people have that reaches outside of just their own personal health & fitness.
Okay I promise I will get to the crux of my argument now.
I find it to be a huge problem that so many people are looking to just “do” workouts. What I mean by this is that people want to work up a sweat. They want to do a handful of exercises. They might even want to work hard.
BUT THEN… it simply stops there.
There is no thinking about how this workout may connect to the previous ones or the next ones. There is no thinking about whether or not this workout is actually even achieving anything. There, often times, isn’t even thinking about what a person wants to accomplish to begin with.
In a world where so so so so so so so so so so so so many people find themselves frustrated with a lack of progress in their health & fitness status it astounds me that the knee jerk solution for many people just worsens the issues at hand.
Let’s imagine you are ‘working out’ 4 times per week. One is a cycle class. One is a yoga class. One is a crossfit class. And one is you doing a HIIT class you found on youtube at home.
First off, you are doing better than a lot of people because you are being active so first don’t get my opinions confused with me calling you a fool… I am not… and I would never discourage anyone from being active however that happens to manifest itself.
That being said… in the example I gave… this person will be making either no progress or painstakingly slow progress.
So let’s take a deep breath and then discuss how to properly go about our training.
So we have diagnosed the problem: a lack of focus and direction with our training.
Now we must discuss the solution: have goals and be accountable to them THEN seek professional help.
Let’s break it down one at a time.
1. Have goals
“Getting ripped” isn’t really a great goal either I hate to break it to you. We need to get a bit more specific. We need to have something that can we determine if we are or are not making progress on. Measurable strength on a handful of exercises? Body measurements? Time on a 1 mile course? Doing 5 pushups? It doesn’t matter what it is but you NEED to have direction.
2. Be accountable to them
This is the tough one for many folks because it requires you to quit making excuses. You can’t wait for the stars to align to affect change in your life. You need to make it happen via blunt force trauma. I’m being a bit extreme but ask yourself this question: “Is worthwhile change easy?” The answer is no and you know it. This isn’t all bad either because if we do this all correctly this won’t mean beating yourself up anytime setbacks happen. Instead, it means we learn more about our bodies and become more effective at making pragmatic decisions over emotional ones.
3. Seek professionals.
This is paramount. Get a coach. Read a book. Study. Research for 30 minutes. You gotta invest in yourself. This doesn’t always mean investing money. At the very least, though, you need to invest time.
Okay I think I am done ranting for now.
But if you learned anything from this article let it be that you will save endless hours of frustration if you take the time to set goals, be accountable to those goals, and seek professional help to aid your journey towards accomplishing those goals.
YOU CAN DO THIS!
Take Care, Comb Your Hair
Coach Dill