Striving for success: The Habitual and The Impromptu

So the way I see fitness, exercise, and the attaining of one's body image, strength or sports sprecific goals and how I see clients and people come and go from the gym the more I see that the one way to help ensure success (at least in the short and medium term) as both a coach and an eerciser is to make exercise HABITUAL.

ha·bit·u·al

/həˈbiCHo͞oəl/

Adjective Done as a habit. Regular; usual: "his habitual dress".

Synonyms usual - ordinary - customary - wonted - common

To make something a habit means to encorporate an action into your daily life, to the point where you feel 'different' if said action doesn't take place at a certain time and at certain intervals. So, if you are someone looking to commit to the gym you must make the gym a habit. For something to become a habit it massively helps if that thing gives you some kind of instant and/or long term gratification.

Forms of gratification

• Short and long-term achievement of goals
• Improved body image
• Feeling good
• Fun
• Makes life easier in some way

 So, to get to your goals, first exercise must become habitual, for it to become habitual a part of you must come to love training and the hopefully concomitant results that come along with training consistently.

Whats not to love?

The best way to ensure results right from the very start is to employ the services of a Personal Trainer or Coach, its as simple as that. When you begin exercising for the first time, you have no idea what you are doing. Get a someone who knows what they are doing right from the very beginning. It will at least guarantee that your technique is good and keep the training schedule varied and interesting (if they are a half-decent PT!)

Me, my bald patch, a client and burpee pull-ups. Fun times were had all round!

Learn to train progressively harder, and over the weeks your body will be able to take more and more punishment (assuming you get adequat rest and variation AS WELL as training hard and consistently) and you will be subsequently stressing your body more and more, hopefully leading to your brain releasing endorphins- the 'feel good' chemicals that make you feel so good after a hard session. So by progressively learning to love pushing the limits of your body, the more you are going to get addicted to these euphoric chemicals....addiction is the easiest way yo make some habitual. Get addicted to training optimally and what you can achieve through exercise and training will defy any of your previous expectations.

To quote the documentary of BBC4 as I write this article "get aquainted with brutality!"
Eventually you will love just seeing how far you can push yourself.



FUN FUN FUN AND THE IMPROMPTU

The key element in all this is making exercise fun, both as a coach and as an exerciser yourself.

Studies have shown for years that the progressive overload form of training of increasing weight and work done week after week after week in order to improve fitness just does not work in the long run...which is good news, as doing the same thing week in week out is boring. So the lesson from this is VARIATION VARIATION VARIATION, change things up in some way every single week. There is a place in the calender year for all types of training no matter what your goals are. Have a week away from your usual training plan and do other things such as climbing or running or anything just different from what you usually do, just keep it fresh, and you'll be suprised at how rejuvenated and full of fire and enthusiastic you will feel.

In the gym today I had a client who was going for his 1 rep max in the bench press, the gym was quiet and the gym owner (also a Personal Trainer) was busy not doing very much, so clearly it was time for an impromptu powerlifting contest of brute strength to see who could bench the most weight. So we cranked up 'Welcome to the Jungle' and went for that shit, yelled like anything, got some benching done and had a hilarious time. Suddenly we are underneath weight we have never been underneath before, testing our courage as well as our strength.

I'd encourage everyone to get these impromptu competitions going as often as possible, compete with anyone and everyone, mix it up.

Make shit up, create new exercises and don't be afraid to go off on crazy workout and exercise tangents in competition with others in the gym.

Yeah you might risk injuring yourself going with these big weights, but warm-up correctly and assuming you've been exercising a while and know how to perform the exercises correctly, you should be fine. Get used to these competitive conditions and learn to push your fellow exerciser, create an atmosphere conducive with success and help push each and everyone training around you to the next level.

Success comes from the mind first, and then, when the knowledge and application and recovery time is there, results will inevitabbly follow!

Test your metal, enjoy the iron and have a blast.

By Chris Kershaw