By How many times have you heard someone talk about a “Super Easy, Only 10 Minutes, The #1 Best, Science Breaking” fitness method. Unfortunately these types of plans are extremely commonplace in the fitness realm. It’s really not very difficult to understand why these types of sales and marketing tactics see their share of success.
The human body is full of countless systems that operate and maintain the status quo every second of the day and this just for you to remain a living, breathing, organism. Not to mention all the processes that are happening behind the scenes when we exert some type of stress on the body. All of this is why those “Get Fit Quick” plans have any type of foothold to begin with. Health & fitness is difficult. It is difficult to achieve long lasting, meaningful results with your body. While some extremely simple lifestyle changes can lead to better health markers like better blood pressure or blood glucose levels, if you want to look, feel, and perform like an athlete or have exceptionally long lasting health, you need to put in an equal amount of exceptional hard work to get there.
Results are amazing. They make you feel good and happy. Everyone loves being able to stare in the mirror or at the scale and see the changes that they’ve worked so hard to achieve. But I would argue that the result should never be your main focus. For one, your fitness goal should always be changing. As you become healthier and more physically capable your goal should realign with what you’re able to do. In certain cases, the results will be the only thing that matters, let’s say competitions, tournaments, and exhibitions of all types where winning is the one thing that matters. But even with these, most athletes would tell you that they view these events as another challenging mile-marker on their way to become champions and bettering themselves. For the majority of people, the focus should be on using those goals as mile markers on the never-ending path towards a healthier, more capable body.
Our main focus should be on the process of it all. The day in and day out work that allows our body to change. When we focus on the process, research, and invest ourselves into our field, we allow ourselves to better enjoy the tasks we’re completing. Enjoying these steps makes it more likely that they have a solid foothold in our routine. This allows us to be more consistent and in turn, more efficient. And the viciously awesome cycle of enjoying the process turns over and over again until before you know it, you’ve achieved a fitness level that you didn’t even know was possible for yourself.
We need to get back to the basics. There is no quick plan that will ever have more worth than what the long path gives you. The long path will give you the lessons in humility and failure. The long path will callous your mind so that your better equipped to keep forging forward. That long, dark, thorny path, with all those scary trees, rough trails, and creepy shadows are going to teach you a whole hell of a lot more than the bright and sunny one. Im pretty sure I’ve veered off of talking about fitness here and I’m just talking about life, oh well. Just as well.
When looking at training plans, if your wish is to make huge strides towards a big change in your body, you should seek out a plan that challenges you. You should look at it and think, Im not sure if I can do all this. Thats the plan for you. Every goal we have should scare us. It should make us take a step back and reassess what we want. Then we should buckle up, look forward, and start working.
-Gabe-
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