Training advice for the Fit Pros

The reasons that you often tell yourself for not working out are very often reasonable arguments why not to get your sweat on and many of us listen to that voice in our heads. There is a yin and a yang to everything in life and it really comes down to the choices that we make on a consistent basis which determine the results that you will see in your life. The key to being able to get the desired results that you are after comes down to how badly you want these changes to happen and whether you are prepared to answer back to that voice in your head that tells you that you are too tired, too busy, too whatever. 

When anyone starts training in the gym it is important to establish why you are there and to understand the real motivation behind why you are visiting the gym. Is it because you want a six pack so that you can look great on the beach, or is it really so that you feel less tired and weary after grafting for a week at work. Training can provide a myriad of benefits, one of which is increased mental clarity and focus! The act of finding out what your REAL why is can help when you feel tempted to skip the gym in favour of some other easier option, like binge watching a netflix series or catching up with friends.

Many people like to think of their motivations as one thing or the other but these are often only surface motivations. Surface motivations might get you started at the beginning but they won’t keep you going when it gets tough! 

So why do I say that your excuses are valid? Well, they are all perfectly correct and based on facts so there is always a perfectly good reason NOT to do something that you would like to do. It can be helpful to make your workouts a non-negotiable in your daily schedule say to yourself in advance of the week how many times you are committing to attend the gym and plan out when you are going- then stick with this plan! Tell your support network what your plans are and get them to text to ask what your are up too at the times when you are supposed to be heading to training! This will give you a level of accountability beyond your own voices.

Letting ourselves down is easy in the short term (of course we hate seeing it long-term) but at the time it’s easy to convince yourself otherwise! Telling someone else though means that you will be letting them down as well and this will hurt your pride far more that giving up on something yourself in private. See if you only tell yourself that you will go to the gym and you don’t, well it is easy to forget about it and move on, but if you have someone holding you to account then it is not so simple! 

Hopefully these tips can enable you to get yourself to the gym and not let your excuses win- no matter how valid they may be…… 

.

Stay Strong 

.

Alex O-King