If you ever sit and watch a small child in and out of their environment, their attention to whatever they are doing is short-lived from one moment to the next. I myself know this to be true watching my 3-year-old make a mess in his toy room as he plays with one toy for a few minutes and moves on to the next. Yet the same can be said about my 5-year-old becoming obsessed with a show or a character that only lasts a few short weeks or a month at best. Shortly after, he is on to the next show or character that entertains his little growing mind.
Your body is no different than the curious growing mind of a child. Too often people get on fad diets, pills, work-out regimens that they stick to for months on end with very little to no results. Growing up, there wasn’t a platform that allowed you to search on end to find a workout to do or program. You would go down to the local store, grab a magazine and whoever was on the cover promoting their chest building workout, that is what you would do until results stopped showing. If you were lucky, you worked out with someone who had been doing it long enough to teach you and help you get on your way. The issue with all of this is the same, the body gets bored very easily of the same routines of fitness every day or most things in life you are involved in. It is either so challenging that your sub-conscious tells you that you cannot do it, or it presents no challenge, and it is on to the next.
The fitness industry sometimes refers to it as a plateau and this in most cases can be true. However, most of the population falls into the trap of liquid diets and the repeat phase of “I did cardio today”. (For the record, cardio stands for cardiovascular, which means raising the heart rate, you can raise your heart rate just by holding your breath, which in return means you are doing “cardio”.) Either way that form of reaching your goals only last maybe a month with 10lb of water weight to be lost. You cannot achieve the same result again, so how do you entertain the mind of a child which is your body?
What can you do? What can you do to entertain your body and still achieve results? If you aren’t in a rush for results and cannot afford a trainer or if you are looking for both, here are some basic effective ways to challenge yourself and entertain what you are doing.
Don’t do what you like!
Challenge yourself to attempt and get good at what you don’t like. I often hear I love doing something simple like leg extensions because it is easy. While those are great to do as a finisher, they aren’t always the developer. Say squatting with a bar is not your strength, you don’t get it, it hurts, or you just don’t like it. Start with Goblet squats or even just air squats, holding on to something like a rack or TRX bands to help develop the form. What aids in the development of a main movement is what you put into your second and third, which will include single joint exercises. Lunges in variations as well as step ups with or without weight are great to add after you complete the main movement itself and have a great carry over. After that is all done, get back on the leg extension machine to finish it up.
Don’t throw it away!
Keep it all written down, tracked with good or bad workouts. Writing what you do allows you to establish a routine, improvements made or not and it gives you something to look back on down the road. You don’t always need an app to do the work for you. Your phone has this cool feature called notes on it. In it decide what worked last week and what didn’t. If something worked well or did not, it does not mean you need to throw it away. Write in your journal or, however, you track it to include not only the weight or volume completed, but what difficulties you face when doing it. Just because it was hard or you didn’t complete the prescribed volume, does not require it to go in the trash. An example for me is Glute Ham Raises. I suck at them plan and simple. But they are in my bag of tricks and rotated in so often to see if I have improved. One more rep than last time on the next try says it all.
Don’t be shy to take a selfie!
I am not referring to the person who throws water on their face to have a really cool grind the grind post. I am talking about videotaping yourself with your phone. One of the best ways to learn what you are doing and to track improvement is to visually see yourself in the act. I have my clients either record themselves or I do so depending on what we are doing. The feedback I give verbally is not always as strong as the visual feedback they can see. We are able to slow the video down frame by frame and look for all areas of opportunity not to repeat. In the end, if the video looks sick, throw on the grams for a few likes.
Change it up!
Nothing says getting in shape requires 80 to 100% of your time in the gym doing the same thing over and over. One of the Russian women’s teams, while competing in volleyball, was known to take a day to play soccer. A sport that has nothing to do with the actual sport they are playing other than conditioning and being able to move into different positions. This is a form of active rest, believe it or not. It allows the body to create a new stimulus that challenges the mind and body, allowing a recovery to take place that later turns to better performance in their own sport. So, instead of hitting that treadmill at the gym for some active rest, change it up and try a rock-climbing gym or even hitting the batting cages. Your body and its recovery will thank you.
5lbs goes a long way!
I’ve been around long enough to know that growth happens fast, sometimes slow and not even at all for a long time. We get stuck thinking the success we had last month in PR will be duplicated the next time around. While this isn’t always true, when it does not happen, the mental thoughts of all everything that sucks come flooding in. Be happy with small steps, small inches lost in your weight loss, small increases in reps or even just a small increase in weight lifted. If I can achieve a 5lb PR from something I did months ago, I am stoked! If it went backwards, I have a lot of questions about what I did not do to prepare myself for training, such as food and sleep. If it is flat, I am still happy. Either way, 5lbs goes a long way. It is no different than a child taking just a few first steps that later turns into them running around like crazy.
What child does anything that isn’t fun?
Okay, homework for most. I get it but still. If your goal is to beat yourself down in a workout that you are so sore it takes days on end to recover, unless you are that weirdo, it’s never fun. Get in there, focus on what you came to do, crank up what ever gets you going and get it done. Too often we take the joy out of what we are doing in training, focusing only on the result today instead of the work being done that could lead to it tomorrow. No child said their ABC with one breath on the first try, it took many tires and at times some frustration. Make this fun every time you go to train and keep practicing until you get to Z.
Remember, you are just lifting weights, you are just working out, you are just going for a jog, you are just exercising. Any additional thought into what you are doing can only cause more mental pain that only leads to you giving up. Your body is just like a child. Remember what it was like to be one and entertain it.
Comments