5 Ways to to Fail at Fitness

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I know you are thinking to yourself, what a post title. I don’t want to fail, I want to succeed at fitting fitness into my life. Well, then listen up. I have been around travelling the “fitness circuit” for over thirty years. You could say I have been on the exercise treadmill, a very long time. I have worked with athletes, moms, business owners, bodybuilders, seniors, children, pregnant women, peri and post menopausal women, men in tights, men in offices, men in too small bikinis and moms in the same. I have learned a thing or two about fitting fitness into daily routines. But let me tell you how I have seen people mess up their own attempts.

1. Not following a specific plan of action. Here is the deal, you scout around the magazines and find every single exercise that seems good for what you want to do. You watch the fitness channel. You collect all of the best info on the net. Yet, you do nothing. Have you heard the saying, “A little knowledge is dangerous.” ?  Well too much information unused is not only ineffective, it’s overwhelming. I could have put a hundred different exercises into this 31 day challenge. You know why I didn’t? Because if you can’t stick to the plan that is simply laid out before you now, all of those other exercises, ideas and good intentions won’t help you. We can all be fitness experts in our minds. But it’s more important we take our little mustard seed knowledge and apply it to our real lives, right?

2. Information Overload – The Endless Search for the Magic Bullet – When I trained clients in the gym, we as trainers would talk about how clients would continue to seek alternate information as well as seek information from other trainers. We never broke client confidentiality but just would acknowledge this as a detriment to the success of the client. The clients that were successful were the ones who steadily stuck to the PLAN laid out by their trainer (with adjustments on the journey) as opposed to those who kept seeking. It’s not wrong to have questions, and be educated. But, without a proper foundation physically, more complex exercises and combinations of movements will lead to injury or frustration. Without a good understanding of the psychological obstacles as well as the basic principles for program design and success, we see failure.

4. Quitting to Soon/Excuses are not Forever – Rome wasn’t built in a day. You are not a fitness failure. EVER. Not as long as you have breath in your lungs. You start, stop, stall, quit. The difference between success and failure is your ability to just try again. But, keep in mind, it has to be a realistic goal to fit fitness into your own daily life. That means if you are sedentary you don’t start with a Marathon. Let’s keep it real, peeps. I think there is way too much information that is saying, you have to train like a Rock Star for it to count. That is a discouraging LIE. Don’t buy it.

5. The Comparison Trap– You compare yourself to yourself when you were 20 years younger; you compare yourself to J-Lo; You compare yourself to your friend who lost 40 pounds and is on the road to better health without you; you compare yourself to the Exercise Instructor at the gym; You compare yourself to anyone you think is where you wish you could be. STOP. The comparison trap is a trap that keeps YOU stuck, mentally and physically. Set yourself free. Don’t play that game. Walk away from the magazines, TV, Pinterest, Instagram or whatever it is that causes you to stumble.

 Proper Perspective – Listen up, the best way to succeed at fitting fitness in is not to complicate the matter! Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. Or don’t start at the top because where can you go but down? Friends, the best way to NOT fail at Fitness is to stick to a simple plan to start and build from there. Stop seeking MORE and act on what you know and CAN do now. Stop making excuses and Get Started. Stop comparing yourself to others and start seeing the YOU who needs to be accepted today; seek support and thank God for the level of health you do have right now.

I also want to let you know that I will be implementing more following our current challenge. This month my time is limited but I am planning to take my Fitness Challenge Graduates to new levels of Health and Wellness. Will you stick with it? Will you start if you have not started yet? Will you jump in today to the Fitness Challenge and prepare to: record your journey, share your success or setbacks, even today?