Just Going through the Motions?

There are many task in every day life that we can get caught up in “going through the motions”. It’s easy to be distracted as you are going through a daily or even weekly routine. Fitness is no exception to this.

Health conscious individuals know they need to workout in some form to keep healthy, but many times, look at it as a task. This is no different than a daily task around the house. When you are performing that daily task, say cutting the grass, do you take time before hand to think about why you are cutting the grass? Do you plan out how you are going to cut the grass, think about the benefits of cutting the grass, and get pumped up? I would say most people do not. So if fitness or a workout is a task to you, what are the odds you will take this same approach? If you are like me, I think about anything and everything besides cutting the grass while I’m on the mower. If you are thinking about other tasks, what you are doing after the workout, homework that needs to be done, reports for work that are coming up, chances are the quality of your workout with be low. From there, your chances of sticking with your workout routine drop due to the lack of results you are seeing. So what can you do to make sure you are getting to most of your workout?

I do a few quick and simple things before each workout. The first thing I do is focus on what my workout is going to be. For example, what muscle group I am targeting, what did I do last time, what I want to focus on? From there I mentally put everything else on hold, I am at the gym to workout, nothing else. So mentally I pump myself up, now whether that’s a certain type of music or maybe no music at all, only you know. Last I remind myself why I’m at the gym and what my goals are, so in my head I know during the workout that this is all for a reason. I typically workout 4-6 times a week so this small prep is essential for me to make sure I’m not just going the motions. If I wouldn’t do this, I would find my workouts lacking effort and in turn not produce results.

When my clients start training with me the first thing I tend to ask them is “what do you want to get out of this, what are you goals?” That way when we are training, I can explain to them why we are doing it a certain way and how it interacts with achieving their goals.