YOU’VE got to want it. I’m talking about change, specifically, but it also applies to many things, like being healthy and fit.
In the vast majority of cases you cannot force change. It won’t last. Forcing will usually be met with resistance. Then you have a fight on your hands and resentment follows.
Change, therefore, has to start with the individual. It has to come from within the individual. And, as a coach, I’m there to help that person along.
The moment they stop wanting/desiring it (change), it’s effectively over. I can’t run the race for them, so to speak. I can’t push them uphill either.
Take Sue Crabtree and Ian Barnett, now at the end of week 5 of the Amazing 12 Chichester. Sue signed up because she wanted to get stronger, but she certainly didn’t need to. I’ve written it this way to differentiate between wants and needs.
For Ian it was different. While carrying extra timber (as he likes to put it), he probably needed to start some exercise regimen and make alterations to his diet, but the process could only begin when he decided it was time.
When I look at my regular clients – the ones who come week in and week out – I see individuals who want to be there and value what training can offer them.
For the more sporadic trainers it’s a case of having to when their shape or health begins to get out of control. Or they just don’t see exercise as being a valuable enough component to their well-being.
However, the latter group tend to yo-yo, whereas the first group are consistent.
But you can trick yourself into wanting to train – if you can find the right bait. Find something – anything – about your training that you love. The wanting will come if the motivating factor is strong enough.
It could be the way your muscles feel afterwards or the people at the gym or the time to yourself or that each training session takes you closer to your goal or staying in shape or how it makes you better than you were the day before or that it will make you look and feel younger or that the consequences of doing nothing will come back to sting you later in life or it makes you feel great.
Get creative (though remain honest) because I understand not everyone enjoys training, but I often ask why? What’s their thought or story or experience about exercise or training that deters them?
Ian wants to be the sort of father who can play actively with his children and be around for them as they grow older. As a conscientious parent, that’s enough driving force to keep him going on the Amazing 12. He’s doing it for himself, but also his family. He’s setting a standard, being a positive role model. He’s trying to reclaim the body he should have in his mid-40s. He’s on a mission to stop and reverse the inevitable decline that comes from neglect and sitting for hours at a desk each day. He’s looking at this as the first stop on his ticket to a better and healthier future.
Luckily, he’s enjoying the training so far. He is seeing and feeling the differences to his physique. He is noticing how much better he is moving. That certainly helps keep his dedication levels high.
But Ian may not be enjoying getting up at 5.23am each morning to drive to the Core Results gym and if he thought only about the wake-up time and losing sleep and how cold it is outside at that time, for how long do you think he’s going to remain committed?
Shifting his attention to how the workouts make him feel, the start it gives him to his day, how it puts him in a more positive frame of mind, gets him closer to his goal of shifting body fat etc makes getting out from under the duvet far easier.
At the end of week 4 Ian went cycling with a group of friends. He said he was “astonished” by how much easier the ride was and when he hit the hills, which are normally tough, he had more strength and energy in his legs.
Holding on to thoughts like this can help us through any sticking points we may encounter. But if we instead think about our favourite sugary foods that we are giving up or aches and pains we feel or the late night TV program we are sacrificing, the potential for being derailed increases significantly.
Sue had a particularly rough week on week 5, not that you would have noticed from her performances in the gym, mind you. But she told me that, mentally and physically, her moods were low and that she couldn’t have felt worse – that she wanted to go home and keep herself to herself. Yet she still came to the gym and, remarkably, put in her best week of training so far.
How she did it was by changing her focus. I’m impressed with that type of commitment and her improvements are beginning to show. I’m not necessarily talking just aesthetics, but more so Sue’s lifting techniques, breathing and concentration, which, to me at least, is equally if not more vital.
The better her technique, focus and breathing becomes, the more weight she will be able to lift and, consequently, her body will change and adapt faster.
Thankfully, Ian and Sue don’t require a lot of motivating. They are, for now, all in. But not all my clients are this way. And often it’s down to where you place and hold your thoughts.