Walking Out of Comfortable Misery.
This is definitely the hardest podcast I’ve done in a while. However, I think that as a coach it’s important to put things out there and share the lessons that I’ve learned from my experience, and boy, have I picked up some stuff.
In this episode I give you kind of a quick and dirty version of:
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One of my members was telling me about a friend who was going on and on to her about her new diet plan. She’d gone through her house, thrown out all of her old favorite foods, hit the grocery store with a list in hand, bought a bunch of food she didn’t even know had existed, and rushed home to do a big meal prep with all of her new storage containers.
She didn’t know how to cook all of that stuff, but she was excited!
You know what? That’s awesome. I’m glad she’s made a change.
HOWEVER. When it’s laid out on paper, I think you can see where this is going… probably not a long-term fix.
We get excited about a change, and we jump in whole-hog. I’ve seen it over and over again, and of course, I’ve done it, too. It’s a common mistake that we all have a tendency towards.
The thing is, though, as excited as you are to jump in it is rarely a lasting answer. It doesn’t pan out in the long run because we’re largely habit-driven people. Habits work so well because they become nearly automatic and “hard-wired”, which means they also don’t change well. Your whole life is built around your current habits. When you kick the anthill and scatter them, your mind tries to fight that chaos by reverting to its autopilot habits…
I mean, as adults, it’s very hard to just stop a habit, be it smoking, overeating, chewing your nails, fastening your seatbelt, brushing your teeth with your right hand, etc. Adults don’t tend to just trash existing behaviors.
So, how DO you make a change? Continue reading
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If you spend any time in the fitness universe, it’s not going to be long before you’re assaulted by supplement ads.
Every time you turn around there’s a loud advertisement in your face promising that this pill, powder, capsule, shake, cream, or whatever is going to be THE fix to whatever you have going on.
Just like the old traveling snake-oil selling “doctors” of yester-year, the supplement business is full of a lot of people talking loud, fast, and trying to sell you some questionable stuff.
Are there any supplements that are actually worth taking, though?
Maybe. Continue reading
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Some mistakes cross multiple domains:
Fitness
Business
Relationships
Life in general
Not building a firm base before upping the ante is definitely one of those. For example, this is the time of the NFL Combine, and so there’s all kinds of really cool videos of future NFL athletes doing crazy training floating around.
I love those videos just as much as the next guy, but… Continue reading
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Fitness, Nutrition, Mindset, everything is easier if you have a framework to go from.
That’s why I developed the Relentless Success Pyramid to help the Relentless members frame their journeys and I’d like to share it with you.
As you can see, there are four parts to the pyramid. In this podcast, I went over three of the first steps we take with almost all of our new clients to introduce them to the pyramid, get them making great progress, and build the foundation of their fitness journey.
Those four pieces are: Continue reading
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A goal without a plan isn’t really a goal, it’s a wish. Most people spend too much time in the “wish” area and ultimately are unsatisfied because they never really nail down what they’re trying to accomplish. In this episode I’m going to fix that!
This episode is the podcast version of the seminar I did for Relentless Members at the gym about Goal Setting, minus the pauses for writing time that we took throughout that workshop.
I’m going to share with you: Continue reading
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Relentless Family member Chuck kept the goal in mind for six weeks… and saw the results!
Ok, setting clear fitness goals is great, but what really matters is figuring out how to stick to your fitness goal. The truth of the matter is, it doesn’t matter what kind of awesome goal you set if you’re not going to follow through with the plan.
In my last post I talked about setting different levels and types of goals, but how do you stick with it when the going gets tough?
1. Clearly figure out your reason “why”. Continue reading
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up someplace else”
-Yogi Berra
Now, Yogi is famous for his quotes, which are often quirky, but there’s a lot of wisdom there, too.
One of the most important things in this whole fitness journey is to set a goal that you’re shooting for. If you don’t, then chances are it won’t be long before you wane from the path. New habits are hard. Adults don’t tend to create them easily and if it’s something that’s going to be a departure from your current life, as adopting a healthier, more fit lifestyle probably is, then it’s not always going to be easy.
So, the first thing we’d want to accomplish is figuring out basically where you want to go and WHY you want to do it. That why is up to you, of course, but if you don’t have a clear sense of that then it is going to be hard to be consistent once the new excitement wears off.
Step 1: Figure out a sense of where you want to go and really zero in on the WHY.
Now, once you’ve got those two basic points down, I like to firm up goals with clients with something called “backwards chaining”, which is a fancy way to say we start at the end and work our way back. Continue reading
This past weekend I was at a business conference. In a lot of ways, business and fitness run parallel. Both require hard work, consistent discipline, and while there’s a lot of flashy stuff out there, there’s also a lot of pretty proven paths to success.
Of course, when you get a bunch of fitness or business people in a room, in this case, fitness business people, you here a lot of talk about “what’s working”. There’s always new ideas being thrown around. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype and want to shake everything up or jump onto a new, shiny program.
Is that really what you need, though?
Maybe yes, maybe not.
Should you change your path?
WHEN should you change your path?
What’s the biggest secret to success that nobody seems to talk about?
I picked up some really great lessons and reminders about those questions this past weekend, and they were definitely not the ones that I expected.
Mentioned Links:
Looking for a simple system to keep making progress every day? Get the free 4ElementalS System that I created to do just that!
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Relentless athlete Travis is getting some serious interval work done on the Prowler!
What Is Being “Fit”?
While it’s great to go talk the nuts and bolts of fitness, sets, reps, grams of protein, and the like… I think it’s important to take a step back and think about something even more fundamental:
Answering the question of “what is being fit?“.
There’s lots of different answers out there, depending on your school of thought or guru that you follow. If you ask the endurance community, they’ll say that fitness is having a great VO2 Max and being able to go for miles and miles. Throw it out to the powerlifters and they’ll say that the only thing that matters is your squat, bench press, and deadlift. Ask a gymnast the question and they’ll have their answer, just like a football player, rugger, or Water Polo player would.
Broaden it out even more, and you’ll find that the 83 year-old who still lives on their own and does all of their own yard work has an answer… and it might be different than the 37 year-old mom of three and probably a bit different than the 32 year-old guy who works in an accounting firm but likes to run obstacle course races on the weekends.
The point I’m trying to make is: Being “fit” isn’t an arbitrary number or ability. It’s the ability to perform your desired tasks. For MOST people, it’ll be something to the effect of: Continue reading
