Maybe some of you are still holding strong, but chances are most of you are transiting away from the optimism of the New Year. Whether you made actual New Year’s resolutions and wrote them down, or you simply thought about the changes you’d like to make in your life, now is crunch time.
Since some 80% of all New Year’s Resolutions are health and fitness related, I figured I’d share some insight into how you can turn your pipe dream New Year’s goals into a living, breathing reality.
Here are a few trouble spots that I see all too often:
Movement Quality Control: If the fitness industry has taught us anything, it’s that novelty is just that. Old movements like running, jumping, throwing, pulling, and pressing never failed us, so the idea that the only thing between you and your results is a new invention is misguided. If you’re buying a fitness gimmick from an infomercial, you might as well not even start training.
Squat well below parallel, run fast, embrace moving heavy loads, and stick to the basics. Like bodyweight exercise, why look further than the masters of human movement? Gymnastics has had the bodyweight thing covered for a few hundred years by now. Want to get strong? Look to the masters. Powerlifters use the deadlift, back squat, and press for a reason. Like a bit more athletic, functional strength, Olympic weightlifting has that figured out. Endurance? Runners, rowers, swimmers, and cyclists should be your model.
Did you notice that none of the aforementioned subject matter experts uses an elliptical? There aren’t any Thigh Blasters, either. With that in mind, upping the quality of your movements may set you free.
Match Your Training with Your Goals: The quality control issue above transitions well into my next point, which is that so many folks struggling to realize their fitness goals often aren’t training the right things in the first place. I’d argue that this mistake is made simply because folks don’t know what they’re doing in the gym or they think exercise is ubiquitous and choose the one they like the most.”
That’s fine and all, but if you want to gain strength, for example, using a body building protocol won’t get you what you need. In the same way, folks with body building (aesthetic) goals that use long slow distance training often are often led toward frustration.
The first step in fixing this problem is to find out what you want and matching it with the best possible training program to get you there. And yes, that means even if it’s not your favorite. Zumba won’t get you strong, no matter how much you like it.
Create a Sustainable Approach. Don’t be a statistic. The numbers say that chances are you’ll set a New Year’s resolution and you’ll come out of the gate hot in pursuit of your goals, only to peter off after sometime. This lack of sustainability creates the peaks and valleys of success and failure that so many folks experience.
A great way to achieve this is to ask yourself in your first week of training, if you could sustain that lifestyle indefinitely. If the answer is “No,” you’re probably moving too fast. Because, of course, doing two-a-days and hitting the gym six days a week the first two weeks of your training doesn’t do a darn, if you aren’t getting to the gym at all three months later.
This is your life and your life isn’t a combine or a bootcamp. Life happens over years, not days and weeks. Once you find a way to live inside of the lifestyle of health and wellness you want you’ll find the success you’re searching for.
No matter where you are thus far in your health and fitness journey, I truly believe that these three things can help you achieve your goals. It’s nothing revolutionary, but neither is true fitness capacity. Good luck, and remember the goal is simply to be, “Better than yesterday.”
Logan Gelbrich is an active leader in the fitness community and is the founder ORIGINAL Nutritionals & Functional Fitness on the Bluffs. For more information visit www.ffotb.com.
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