Having been a fitness coach/gym owner/personal trainer for over a decade, I’ve witnessed a lot of people try to “get in shape” and fail. However, I’ve also witnessed many do the opposite, and achieve the desired “shape” they sought out to get many years prior.
What is it to be in shape? It’s a very subjective term, of which you’ll need to define for yourself, though I may be able to help. When I’m in sales meetings with people who are interested in my gym, 100% of them want to be in better shape. People don’t join a gym because they want whiter teeth or improved knowledge on personal finance. They want to be in better shape. What that typically means is they want a few (or all) of the following things:
- To feel better about themselves.
- To like what they see in the mirror more than they currently do.
- To not feel weak or easy to get out-of-breath doing simple things.
- To improve their health to a point that their primary care physician would smile and not assign them something to work on.
Notice that none of these things are so specific that they’d require some specialized training, like trying to run a sub 6 minute mile or bench press 225lbs. There’s a thousand different ways someone could exercise and eventually feel better about themselves, while ultimately looking better in the mirror, getting stronger and improving their health.
So if it’s not a super-secret-download-my-E-Book-workout-plan that’s needed to achieve getting in shape, what is it?
It’s boredom and patience. This is the hard truth. Now don’t get me wrong, your workouts don’t need to be boring, though they should follow enough consistency (type of exercise, length of workout, frequency, and time) so that the routine isn’t always changing and you’re not always trying something new.
When someone quits one type of workout program to find something better, they’re just slowing the process down. Granted, if you absolutely despise the thing you’re doing, maybe that’s not the right path to start on. Say you hate running. Cool, you don’t need to be a runner. Join a strength gym, that still does a bit of conditioning. Say you hate weights. Cool, you don’t have to be a weightlifter. Join a bootcamp – that still has some, but not a lot of weights.
Whatever it is you do, you have to stick with it long enough so that the routine itself becomes kind of boring. Over time, the consistency of doing the same thing (not literally the same workouts though) will provide the greatest results. Go to the gym 3 days per week, every week. Lift some weights and do some cardio. Repeat for a few years.
Think of it like brushing your teeth. If you had a killer day of oral hygiene – you brushed 2 minutes per day in the morning and night, with an electric toothbrush – you flossed – you used a water pic – you mouth washed – would your teeth be any different tomorrow?
Of course not.
Now lets say you did less – just brushed your teeth twice per day.
For 1 year.
Would your teeth be better than your 1 day of perfect mouth care followed by 364 days of nothing?
Of course.
It’s boring, but it works, and you can’t argue it.
Stop wasting time over analyzing every gym, program and trainer in town, and just get started with something that is good enough. In Jonathan Goodmans book The Obvious Choice, he wrote “Good enough, repeatedly, is how you get great.”
Get bored with it, but just keep doing it, and one day you’ll wake up and be in shape!