Stop Stopping....
I’ve been in the health and fitness
industry for ten years this year. Actually, if I go back to when I started
teaching classes it would be longer. One of the things I see consistently is
people stopping, then starting again, then stopping, then starting again, then
stopping, then starting again…
It’s an ongoing cycle that I will never
fully understand. Every time they start again, they comment that they wish they
hadn’t stopped because now they have to start again. And yes, it’s hard to get
started!
We brush our teeth every day, we go to the
toilet, we even shower (hopefully most days)! Yet when it comes to factoring in
regular exercise, it seems to be the one thing human beings lack the most
consistency with. Yet it has the ability to DRAMATICALLY change the course of
our lives.
The reasons I always hear are:
- · I’m not motivated.
- · I don’t have time.
- · I don’t enjoy it.
- · Work is too busy at the moment.
- · I can’t afford it.
- · I’m too tired.
Let me put it to you like this. Motivation
is not an actual thing. It’s not a tangible object that you can buy. It’s not a
muscle you can develop. Quite frankly, it’s a myth.
Like brushing your teeth, showering, eating and dressing, you just have to
do it. It’s part of life. There is enough research and evidence to suggest that
exercise is as important as brushing your teeth and showering. So, put your
shoes on and go to the gym. Sound simple?
Well it is. We need strong bones, muscles
and minds to conquer the world on a daily basis; you are not going to get that
by sitting at home watching TV, throwing back some chocolate and wine and
waiting for the motivation fairy to tap you on the shoulder.
That fairy isn’t coming.
Time is also a bit of a myth, so what’s the
real reason? Every human has the same amount of time available to them.
However, do you respect the time given to you? Do you value every single
precious minute available to you? Or do you waste it doing things that don’t
serve you or your family?
For example – how many minutes are lost to
the social media scroll, to TV or to unnecessarily long conversations about
non-essential, unproductive topics?
Inspired by a friend and valued client
recently (thanks Katrina), I timed how much time I wasted aimlessly scrolling
social media in a day and I was SHOCKED. Now that is saying something coming
from me because I highly value my time and run my day in 15 minute increments.
When I stopped doing that, my productivity went through the roof. To achieve
three solid training sessions per week with a quality program that includes a
clear objective and measures in place to achieve them is 1.76% of your
allocated hours each week. This is achievable.
This is all it takes.
If you don’t enjoy your training, then you
need to make sure you are in the right place. Does the environment inspire you,
do you enjoy the experience, have you asked for help and are you investing in
quality coaching? Or is it simply because you didn’t get results because you
were training for the sake of ticking the box, rather than engaging in the
RIGHT training?
Exercise with people who inspire you and hold you accountable |
At least once a week, someone will tell me
they can’t afford a coach or even a gym membership, but will happily knock back
a bottle of wine (or more), eat out a few times, buy coffee every day or eat
takeaway or burgers on a regular basis. So basically, it’s not that finances
are unavailable, it’s that the priorities are not quite on track. If your
health was higher up the list, the investment in yourself and in a coach would
not even be a question.
Living in these times, when life is fast
and busy and health is on an epic decline, can we really NOT afford to invest
in ourselves and get the help we need? I can’t. I invest in coaching twice a
week and it’s a massive stretch for me. But without it, my mental and physical
health suffers, so it’s a on-negotiable investment for me.
Fatigue, desire and mental state are a few of
the other excuses that I hear a lot and to be frank, this concerns me. At RHQ
we firmly believe that regular exercise in the right environment can
dramatically impact the quality of someone’s mental health, which will significantly
decrease that ongoing feeling of fatigue.
As a longtime sufferer of insomnia, not
exercising is not an option for me. If forced to have even a week off, my sleep
suffers immediately. It’s just not worth it. I also treated my PND with regular
exercise. But can I tell you – getting myself there each time was an incredible
challenge. But you know what, I just put my shoes on and made it happen.
So, if you want to know why you stop, then start,
then stop again. It’s because you are choosing to do that.
And one more thing....what if just before you stopped, you were on the brink of something WONDERFUL, but you missed out on experiencing that moment in time because you stopped (again).