By Adam Friedman, CSCS, CN, CMT
Founder of Advanced Athletics
Whatever your fitness goals, be confident that you can accomplish them over time with consistency and a solid game plan. “Taking it one day at a time sometimes seems like just a cliché. But it is a mind-set that really works because it allows the mind to stay focused on “being”…healthy and fit, and not the “doing.”
It’s easy to get caught up in the “doing” of exercise and eating properly, which can feel more like a “have to”. The “doing” is robotic, where there is no real connection to why you’re doing it and what you experience as a result. The “doing” of it all can become cumbersome and overwhelming, making it difficult to enjoy life. That leads to internal resistance, inconsistency, discouragement, disappointment, and defeat.
Letting health and fitness just become a consistent part of who you are will make reaching your goals enjoyable.
To stay consistent, here are a few suggestions:
1. Set Measurable Short-term & Long-term Goals
a. Keep your written health and fitness goals visible. Review them as often as possible. Post them on the fridge, bathroom mirror, car dash board (without obscuring the gauges), at your desk.
b. Establish a rating system of 1-10 of where you are in relation to your goals.
c. Every month, rate yourself to show progress, and write down what it will take from you to improve the following month.
2. Journal Daily
Write down something each day that pertains to what you did well, and what didn’t work well. Then commit to keep doing what works the next day, and don’t do what didn’t work the next day.
It’s not about writing everything that you do, but maybe the areas that you know that you have been challenged with.
- Nutrition – what foods, quantities, times you ate, how you felt before and after, etc.
- Exercise –
- Cardio – Mode, Duration, Distance, Intensity, Perceived Exertion
- Strength – Exercise, Sets, Resistance, Reps, Recovery
- Water Intake
- Sleep
- Mood
3. Reach out for support
- Find a workout partner and set times to meet.
- Work with an Advanced Athletics Trainer to show you how to get explosive results.
- Work with an Advanced Athletics Nutrition Coach to guide you and hold you accountable with your eating, and exercise.
4. Schedule each of your workouts as an important project meeting, only with yourself. Keep all your appointments as if you were meeting with your most important client…you.
5. Change your workout as often as every two weeks, up to 6 weeks. This breaks up the monotony, and allows for different stimulus to your muscles and nervous system. Make each routine progressively more challenging each week.
If consistency is a challenge for you, here are some valuable questions to ask yourself:
1. How important is exercise in your life? (Scale of 1-10) If you are at a 10 great! If you are below a 10, what is in the gap between where you are and a 10?
2. Make two columns on a piece of paper with the one these questions in each. (list 5 for each)
When you aren’t consistent, you are? When you are consistent, you are?
What gets in the way of my consistency is? What I do to stay consistent is?
After answering, you get to focus on all of the things in the right column to be consistent.
3. Lack of Consistency can mean a lack of value, commitment, organization, structure. Would any of those be true for you? If so, what do you get to do now to be consistent?
In closing, consistency is a practice in itself. Presence yourself with being healthy and fit when options are presented which can lead you either on the road to victory, or the road to defeat. Trust yourself to make the choice that serves you best.
If you seek more guidance, please call/email our coaching center to schedule a Complimentary Health Assessment to further discuss your goals and needs at 310.396.2100.