Notoriously this is the time of year where people start to lose direction with their training and can fall away from their previous habits. So I thought it would be an opportune time to give you some tips to help improve your consistency and to make training in Winter more bearable!
1. Set yourself up to win the game!
People have a terrible habit of constant self sabotage. The reason for this is that we are programmed to set ourselves up to fail rather than setting ourselves up to win. If I was training a client who had never exercised before and wanted to lose 40kg, my first response would not necessarily be to throw them into a 4 day per week structured program. Nope, I’d tell them to remove one suboptimal thing from their diet each week and to go to the gym for 10 minutes once per week. Why set the bar that low? Because you are almost guaranteed to exceed the expectation. From your perspective, if you constantly start each week telling yourself that you MUST get to the gym 4 times that week, but you have to unexpectedly work late on Monday, you’ve immediately failed by your own lofty standards. Instead try setting yourself a bite-size goal of getting to one class this week and anything else will be a bonus. You will more than likely exceed this expectation and build consistency from there!
2. Don’t sweat the small stuff!
Learn to roll with the punches! If something unexpectedly gets in the way of your routine, don’t treat it like an apocalyptic event! Learn to accept that life is unpredictable and we can only control certain aspects of it. Sometimes things happen outside of our control that might get in the way of our ideal path – embrace it, learn from it, but NEVER let it allow you to stray from the path.
3. Adapt & Evolve
Following on from the point above, you must learn to adapt in changes that take place in your life and in your training. Major life events such as getting married, starting a family, changing jobs and moving house can sometimes trigger a major lifestyle overhaul. While certain changes will ultimately be necessary when your life develops, view this as your evolution. Adapt and change your goals, your processes and your training priorities as your life evolves.
4. Change Your Mindset – Abundant over Scarcity
An abundant mindset is one in which an individual is open to new ideas, information sharing and to being assisted by others. Those who have a scarcity mindset tend to blame others for their failures, don’t trust others easily and tend to employ a highly stressed lifestyle. Make small changes to make your mindset more abundant and try to avoid those with a scarcity mindset – people with a scarcity mindset are easily identifiable and pull others around them down.
5. Respect the Process!
You’ve all heard me use the above phrase a lot!!! We think of ourselves as a School of Fitness, not a gym and we like to think of our members like our students. We are teaching you complex movement skills that take months to learn and years to master. Yet, we are driven by societal expectation of “fast track” results. Think of CrossFit like learning to play an instrument or learning a martial art – it takes time, dedication and patience. Take a look at the photo above – on the left is Coach Sam shortly after I first met him as a fresh faced student in 2011 while teaching him on his fitness course. Then take a look at the photo on the right from this years Open. Four years of hard work, patience and respecting the process can produce results like this. Small personal example – before we moved to Australia, I wanted to learn a martial art after I’d sold my business and had a few months off. Firstly I had an unrealistic time-frame (4 months). Secondly I set myself an unrealistic goal of going to a class 6 days per week. I stopped attending that regularly after about 2 weeks and after that I devolved to not going at all. Start slowly and progress with a gradual pace.
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By Coach Dave