"Dear Anna, I’ve been training with you for a while but I’m struggling to workout in my own sessions. It’s not time related, I have the time, I’m just struggling to make myself do them… or really do anything that I said I would when we first started. What can I do to get this show on the road?"
First and foremost, this is quite normal for someone starting from scratch. It is HARD to reallocate time, especially if you are used to getting home from work before 7pm and enjoying 3-4 hours of your own evening. So here are a few things I would do to start with and see what happens from there.
Check in with your goals. Why are you really trying to train more? Are there health related goals that you are working toward? They have a certain degree of priority over the comfort of sticking with the same routine you’ve always had. Is there a physical event you really want to do that this new training schedule is moving you toward? Is this for your health and for your family's future? Reassessing why you are doing something can help get that reason to the forefront of your mind.
Acknowledge how far you’ve already come. You’re committed to a session with me every week that you’ve been coming to since we started that. That is already one session a week more than you were doing before. Sometimes acknowledging how far you’ve already come can be a big motivator & confidence booster toward taking another step forward.
Start small. Increasing your steps. Slipping in to the gym for 10 minutes cardio and then leaving. Doing 2 sets of your home workout while you wait for your dinner to cook. Set yourself a bite sized chunk that you’ll be able to accomplish and that doesn’t have a huge effect on your comfortable timetable already. Once you know you can do that, it won’t seem such a big deal to add in a little more, and a little more.
Write down the benefits of our PT sessions. The real ones, not the reasons why you tell your colleagues you’re doing it. The confidence boosting reasons, the energy levels, the feelings of success, the feeling of having someone else’s undivided attention for an hour, of having somewhere to go to directly ask all your queries from the week, the mental health benefits, of getting rid of aches & pains, of feeling stronger than ever before. The REAL benefits that none of us talk about enough.
Know this. Every single person who you would consider superfit, was once a person who would have rather stayed on the sofa with a Dairy Milk than have gone to the gym. But they forced themselves to do their workouts, and they slowly fell in love with it. You cannot become a professional tennis player without picking up a racket. What that means is, you can’t become fit and healthy without having to go through this shit bit where you need to constantly force yourself to do the thing you’re trying to avoid. We all get it, we’ve all been there. But no-one can do it for you. Not even your PT - unless you want to pay them £10k a month to move into your house and drag you out of bed every morning and force you to do it so get that 20 minute home workout done before I turn up with my suitcase.
If you’ve got your own fitness/nutrition related question and want it answered, feel free to send it on in and I’ll get it anonymously answered :)
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