Everybody is excited when they make the decision to hopefully improve their quality of life and start a fitness training program.
And they should be – Achieving a productive level of fitness will improve every aspect of your life and pay a lifetime of dividends!
It will improve your physical and mental capability, durability, confidence, job performance, your career earnings, relationships, boost your mood, reduce stress, enhance your discipline, project an image of vitality and getting shit done, prepare you for emergencies and statistically keep you walking the planet for a long time.
I will never squelch a trainee’s enthusiasm for their fitness program when folks excitedly tell me how they are training. And some of them are indeed on an excellent path to achieve their worthy goals.
However, I get a kick out those folks with little perspective who will sing the praises of their workouts or tell me a statue should be erected to their trainer or proceed to tell me how to train.
I will absolutely entertain someone’s advice if their demonstrated fitness metrics, movement quality, durability and body composition match or exceed my own and they have successfully applied their methods to a body as old as mine.
A trainee who is banged up, injured, overweight, moves like a creaky gate, has to use wraps on every joint to stalk around the gym, needs to pop pain relievers to perform their “awesome” workouts and peppers phrases like “no pain no gain” into their conversations with me – I tend to just smile and politely ignore their advice.
I humbly submit my observations from someone who has been training, learning and making every fitness faux pas and ass backwards mistake since Jimmy Carter was president:
How To Tell If Your Fitness Program Is Working
It’s quite simply getting you closer to your goals – You did specify these when you decided to improve your fitness and well being, right?
You are seeing achievements in fitness metrics. Strength, mobility, cardio, endurance, body composition, bloodwork, etc….
Your mood is good and motivation is high
You are feeling robust and confident
You are not drained or pained
How To Tell If Your Fitness Program Is Not Working
You are not mentally ready to commit to a positive fitness and health change – You find yourself making excuses to not do the work, skip training, blame others for your lack of discipline or put forth half ass efforts
You are getting injured. This is the ultimate indication you or your trainer doesn’t know what they’re doing – oftentimes a combination of the two.
You insist on solely doing exercises you ENJOY doing rather than those exercises that you NEED to be doing. If you don’t find this balance or gain an understanding of this concept, you may never achieve your goals and just tire yourself out achieving little results
You fanatically embrace the exercise portion of fitness, but ignore practicing sound health and dietary habits. This contrast will always be a drag on your results.
You channel your energies into overcomplicated or baseless fitness programs designed to excite you, yet provide no path to sustainable results
What You Need To Get Right
1.You need to get the training frequency right
2.You need to get the training intensity right
3.You need to get your exercise and movement choices right
Understand that everybody is at a different fitness level and age so you or your trainer need to find a personalized balancing act that leverages these three training variables that drives your fitness results forward without de-railing your progress while avoiding injury.
I can only tell you what has worked for me and probably more important – what hasn’t worked. Can you fill in the gaps to your training by applying some of my concepts I practice or timeless fitness methodologies I have learned from some of the solid fitness thinkers, doers and coaches in the world of physical culture? I believe you can “mine” something of value from my posts, but I also don’t try to be everything to everybody and expect to be everyone’s cup of tea.
I can’t give you a “universal” formula, training routine or exercise checklist that covers these three critical areas without actually seeing how you move, discussing your goals and limitations, gauging your level of discipline or seeing what your baseline fitness metrics are
You need to put some thought into your training or make damn sure you choose a competent trainer. And don’t just blindly follow some rigid routine written on a piece of paper or whatever the hell your favorite celebrity “claims” they do.
I also can’t stress enough that you need to keep an open dialog with your body and listen to it when it tells you when to work it and when to back off the intensity and workout frequency. Test yourself, experiment with your training and allow time to get in tune with your body so as to challenge yourself without over training.
Over training will over tax and smoke your central nervous system – inviting injury, illness and is a recipe for pounding your joints to dust.
The trick is to challenge your body just enough with the ideal exercise movements to elicit a positive metabolic response, rest and improve without inviting pain, injury and counter productive exhaustion into the mix.
I know, easier said than done!
It took me years to figure out my own ideal balance of training intensity, frequency and exercise selection mostly because I was ignorant, thought doing more was better, liked to show off doing “flashy” exercises, stunts and challenges that were high risk and of low value and was slow to seek out and learn from those with greater skills than myself.
The Basic Habits And Attitude For Success
Be realistic in your approach to fitness improvement – Set attainable goals and build upon and be proud of all the small advancements that will add up to a powerful fitness foundation
Have patience, cultivate discipline and don’t expect instant gratification. Building any sound and sustainable structure takes time and thoughtful planning and doesn’t happen overnight! Your body is the most important organic “structure” on the planet – So train it thoughtfully!
Don’t compare yourself to the rare 1% fitness genetic freaks and anomalies showcased and hyped by social media to make you believe we can all look and perform like them. These lucky folks hit the genetic lottery that you, I and 99% of the world missed out on and their bodies were built more on genetic predisposition rather than the training routines and diets they may want you to believe produced their incredible bodies and capabilities.
Also don’t compare yourself to the many performance drug infused “juice” giants and crazed supplement junkies. If you follow their lead, you may be trading your health, quality of life and longevity on this planet for a quick artificial and unsustainable taste at being “Superman” or “Wonder Woman” for a brief moment in time.
Realize that there will be training ebbs and flows, good days and bad days, frustrating plateaus, progress/regress and sometimes some disappointing derailments to any fitness program. Learn from the highs and lows of your training journey, try not to repeat your mistakes and observe patterns of successful behaviors responsible for driving your results forward.
Understand every day is not going to be a balls to the wall training day – especially as you get older. Some days you will just feel like crap for whatever reason(poor sleep, not recovered from previous workout, allergies, hung over – whatever. Those are the days to go easy on the intensity, rest or just take a walk or hike. Save those highly intense training days when you feel supercharged and robust which for me is about once per week.
Hopefully some of the points I outlined will re-focus your training efforts if you feel you are putting a lot of time into your training and not getting the realistic results you desire.
Or just be comforted getting a boost from someone that’s traveled a long fitness road who is rooting for your success and wants you to avoid all the potholes I hit along the way.
Related: Exercises Every Training Program Needs
Related: Listen To Your Body – It Never Lies
Related: How Strong And Fit Can You Really Get?
I’m Mark Mellohusky (Mellow-Husky)
I pride myself on being a product of my own advice and the methods I practice enable me to be a powerfully active durable citizen that makes things happen in life instead of just letting life happen to me.
While I share A Lot of tips, techniques, and fitness philosophy on my site, it is unrealistic to try to adopt it all into your fitness plan as we all have different health and fitness gaps in our programs we need to address.
So take what you need to succeed even if it’s just one concept I share and fill your fitness gaps, dare to get out of your comfort zone and experience the thrill of doing what works and realizing your goals!
Take action. At some point you have to get on the road and stop talking about the trip!
Opportunities rarely come in neat, predictable packages. Don’t let them pass you by!
You have to fight in this world, but most people are fighting all the wrong fights!
Seven Stars Fitness