-
Showing posts tagged psychology
-
”Do not make things harder than they need to be. Aim for simplicity because it is the simplicity that makes your program successful but most importantly it give you Confidence.
Greg Marshall
-
The World of Personal Training and How it works. Personal Training is so misunderstood and my goal is to help give people a better understanding of what we do and how we do it.
-
You are not a Fitness Failure … I Promise
Many things that we worry about in our regular life as far as reaching goals and expectations of ourselves many times transfer through to our fitness goals as well. We think, I have tried this diet or that fad diet and that they were all empty promises and that we are destined to fail or something is inherently wrong with us. This cannot be further from the truth because in order to reach something that is worth anything it will not come easy but that is where the fun is at. Think about how you will feel when you finally accomplish that fitness/life goal of reaching the “unreachable”. Life is full of obstacles and ups and downs and that is what we, the gyms and personal trainers are here for is to be your therapist/doctor/workout professional.
If you have tried workout dvd’s, weight watchers, fat burning pills, or a previous personal trainer and things have not worked out … do not give up…. keep trying. There is a surefire way to fail and that is to lose hope in yourself and your goals and to just quit and think that your dreams of being fit can never come true. Being fit first starts with a mindset of what it is you want and usually your mindset needs to be clean of as many negative sayings that you say to yourself as possible. I have personally witnessed clients who have said some things to themselves in the mirror that they would never dream of telling another loved one yet they tell themselves those things. Look! There is no such thing as perfection that is all an illusion. The pictures that you see in magazines and movies are mostly photo shopped and they are created for you to buy their product by making you feel imperfect. For one, I can speak for myself on this one and tell you that when I was growing up I would look at some of these pictures of “perfect” men on magazines and think “why can’t I look like these guys? “. I was naive and had no idea the amount of preparation and “creative art work” editors and crash diets did to these guys to be so perfect. What worked for me was to stop focusing on that and start focusing on the important stuff which is how I felt and my very own progress. It has helped me TREMENDOUSLY.
My personal opinion should be that you work on yourself and become the very best of yourself that you possibly can be with the genetics you were given. There is nothing wrong with the things we have been blessed with, what is wrong is our acceptance of what we have. You do not need to be someone else to feel the way you want to feel, what you need to do is look yourself in the mirror and dig deep and tell yourself that you can do it. Forget about the failures of the past because they are over and done with what matters is what you can do TODAY. That is always what we have the ability to do which is control NOW. Starting today should be your new fitness outlook on how you will achieve happiness through fitness. Allow yourself to enjoy the holidays and fun things and foods that it offers but take care of yourself as well. Fitness is more than just low body fat and the number that speaks to you on the scale, contrary to what the media wants you to believe! Fitness is about taking care of yourself which then translates into taking care of the people around you better which then translates into a more happier and fulfilling life.
Please do not make the mistake of defining your happiness by all of these “false” expectations of what you are supposed to look like. You are not supposed to look anything! The real challenge you should be working on is how to better your PERSONAL best each and every day and I promise you, the results will start to happen and fitness success will come. What fitness Success is not - it is not the number on the scale going down or up, but it is the overall improvement of your quality of life.
I will not make the mistake of saying that I have it all figured out and that I never get feelings like this too but hey we are all in this together so let’s work on this together.
A great gym and a great personal trainer will be able to help you and that is why we are in this industry because it is all about empowering each other through fitness. The industry was created to change people’s lives … let’s utilize it and keep it that way :)
-
Personal Training can Be Therapy
This is what a good personal trainer does for you. A good personal trainer creates this belief that is contagious which is that Failure is not an option. The good personal trainer truly makes you believe and buy into this because it is true. As trainers we do not want you to fail at achieving your goal because we got into this business to help people. We got into this business to make people feel a certain feeling. That feeling can range from feeling empowered, cared for, supported, or just plain old good.
The way that a good trainer prevents the failure from happening is from the get go they openly discuss not only what your fitness goals are but also what is going on in your life on an emotional level. The good trainer figures out what it is that you need and how to help create the environment for you to succeed. There is something to be said about a very strong support system. In every program that succeeds whether it is weight watchers or drug rehabilitation, there is not only a accountability system and proven know how method to get you where you want to be, but there is also a system where they break down your personal lives, emotions, desires, and goals. This creates a connection that I believe causes our motivations to go up.
Whenever we have someone who truly believes in us and that we can and will succeed, we push a little harder for that person and we find a way to give EVERYTHING that we got. This is the job of a truly amazing personal trainer because they help you feel this feeling.
The personal training industry is full of trainers who are out there to change people’s lives and I truly believe that for the most part personal trainers have their heart in the right place and if you ever have a hard time with your fitness goals or even problems that you are going through personally, my firm belief is that a good personal trainer can act as not only your trainer but your therapist as well.
-
Definition of Personal Training
Personal training is a very interesting concept when it comes to what it actually is and what it can do for you in the long run. First let me tell you what personal training is not. Personal training is not about just having someone scream at you or belittle you to the point where it does not motivate you. Personal training is not about show offs showing you there muscles or talking about how great they are and how one day you can be just like them. Personal training is not only for people who are celebrities or are rich. Personal training is not scary and as complicated as it is portrayed or thought of in the mind.
Personal training is something that is designed to empower you and make you feel like you can push yourself to previous limits you thought were impossible. Personal training is something that should make you feel empowered after the session that carries over to your life. Personal training is something that you should look forward to because of how it makes you feel emotionally and the support you have. Personal training is something that is affordable and you can be a part of it if it is important enough in your life. Personal training has a direct impact on other areas of your life such as how you do at work, your relationships, and of course your own self esteem.
Personal training will teach you to believe in yourself more because you are being coached and challenged into believing that you can do more and be more. There is nothing wrong with wanting to achieve more in your life or test the limits. You should feel connected to your personal trainer and your personal trainer should feel like they are your best friend and best support system. Your personal trainer should always have your best interests in mind and that should never change when it comes to the relationship. We all need help at times at least I know I have needed help in the past and it is a commitment you make to yourself to be the best that you can be. Make it because you deserve it.
-
Let Your Past Make you Better, Not Bitter
Many people when they are trying to get in better shape, let their past and their emotions take over instead of letting go and allowing themselves to change into the person that they want to be. Your past is not who you are now. I know that I have made that mistake many times over thinking that past events dictate how I feel now and how I should feel. I did not start to learn the important habit of giving myself permission to be who I want and to enjoy the moment until a few years ago. This was a very foreign concept to me and I now realize that I was the one holding myself back this entire time and blaming others and situations instead of taking the responsibility. Now, granted it does take time to learn through failures and tribulations and it does not happen by accident, when a failure or a mistake happens you must discipline yourself to learn the lesson from it so that you can become better in the future.
Now how do you apply this to your fitness goals? This is a great question that must be analyzed and answered if you want to be the best that you can be in your fitness pursuit. You are going to have to look at your past and also pay very close attention to your daily habits and see what is going and notice the trends. The key reason why this is important is because if you do not pay attention to your habits you will be missing out on some key points that can help make your journey easier. For example, many women eat and crave different things when they are stressed about specific situations or their hormones are fluctuating through the month. This is super important because if you are in this habit and it keeps happening you are going to beat yourself up and think that you have no willpower which is not the case AT ALL. It is a belief system or response to a situation that you have either learned or picked up over time from someone else. So the remedy to this is to just eat normal for a week and track everything you do in addition to how you emotionally feel at the time you are eating the things you are eating and what events may be happening as well. Journaling sounds tedious but it can cause tremendous improvements.
To dive in even deeper look at your childhood and past experiences and truly learn from them. What you will want to look for is your associations with certain activities. For example, if you played sports like me then you will most likely have remembered the experience of using running as a source of punishment when you messed up. What this will actually do is mentally train you to hate running and on top of that you will want to stay as far away as possible from any form of running because that would trigger in your mind that you have “failed” at something and we all know how much we love that.
So in order to make the best of what you want in your fitness life now and to make the improvements that you really want I would recommend that you get an accountability partner and coach as well to help you go through the mental barriers that are often the real reason why we do not reach our goals. When you work on your past and current mental conditionings and really work through them you will see a big breakthrough in your motivation as well as your progression because things will be congruent with each other. I PROMISE.
-
If You Ever Doubted Yourself
This picture says it all when it comes to how you think about your goals and dreams and what your mind tells you you can or cannot do. All of our lives we are constantly told that because you are this or that, you can only accomplish certain things or have a certain amount of success. This is not 100 % true because this is what we were taught as we were growing up, and what our family, friends, and enemies have said to us we chose to automatically believe, including myself. This has been a challenge in my life over time that I have had to work on to get better and to really challenge myself and my beliefs completely. To tell you the truth that is how I became a seriously big time reader and started to get really curious and ingest every kind of reading material I could read ranging from sports books to psychology and spiritual books.
I used to have the terrible habit of thinking that all of the good things in life just happened to “lucky” people or that it was for a select chosen few and that I could never attain those successes because it was for others. One day I had someone challenge that to me and told me that I could do things that I thought I couldn’t and that I was holding myself back and that I should have more faith in myself. He taught me a serious lesson and really woke me up to what I could achieve and that I did not have to feel this way and that I could control it.
After he snapped me out of it I started to put more effort into what I did because before when I felt that I was part of the “unlucky” ones I did not put my full effort into what I was doing because I genuinely felt that it did not matter and that no matter how hard I tried I was just destined to be an average no one. I was basically on autopilot. As I went on to put my heart and soul into the very things that I loved I found that I started to have more fulfillment with what I was doing and “success” started happening. This was one of the most influential lessons that I have ever learned and I am very grateful that it happened to me and I got a chance to snap out of it because if I didn’t who knows how terribly I would still be feeling and how little hope I would have.
This is why I have been so interested in reading books and reaching out to people to learn their stories whether it is of success or failures because there is a lesson in everything and I am fascinated by people’s perspective. I have felt just like everyone else has felt before and I believe everyone feels the same feelings at many times or another and over time I have realized whether that person is a millionaire or a bum, the feelings are the same and it is just how they react to them is what makes the difference.
My advice to you if you are doubting yourself currently like I have in the past on more than one occasion is to ask yourself a series of questions to reveal why you believe whatever it is you are believing and then ask if it is possible that you are wrong or you are telling yourself a fictional story. My example that I used to tell myself all of the time was, if I do not accomplish certain goals then no one will accept me for who I am or will like me because they will not want to be associated with me because I am not increasing their value. I found this to obviously be a fictional story I was telling myself and I would use it against me and if you can imagine how much unnecessary stress I put myself under for no reason. This is just one of many lessons I learned over time that I have worked on and I hope it can help you as well.
Any belief that causes you to think that you cannot do it…. challenge it and do not let it define you.
