Summer is almost upon us and although the mojority of us will have holidays and trips on the horizon, we tend to get more complacent than ever when the weather is shining and we all seem to miss the odd gym session or have an extra ice cream. Hopefully after reading this article, you will be more motivated and fired up to reach those goals and targets than you have ever been before.
Throughout this article im going to be speaking from my own experiences as well as from what i have learned from my clients over the past 5 years of being a personal trainer and online coach. I have found that depending on the individuals own personality, that different techniques work so take out of this the parts that are relevent to you.
GOAL-SETTING-First thing first is that you need a specific goal to reach otherwise the early get-ups, all of the turned down temptations, all of the meal preps will be made 10 times harder. Now this goal can be anything at all, no matter how crazy it may sound but do not confuse this with being unrealistic. All it might mean is that you need little sub-goals to help you reach it. For example, rather than ‘lose 5 stone in a week’ or ‘knock 6 minutes of my 5k time within 2 weeks’ it could be ‘lose 3 pounds a week steadily’ or ‘il try to be 20 seconds faster each run that i do’. By doing this, it is easier to monitor your progress and you are able to see the changes.
REMINDING YOURSELF-Once you have this goal you need to remind yourself of it…daily! Whether you put a reminder in your phone to pop up just before your due lunch or when you get home to remind yourself to get to the gym. You can put a picture of you ideal body on your fridge to stop any bad snacks you may be about to graze on or you can, (like me) have pictures of physiques that you long to have saved in your phone so whenever there is a weak moment or a lack of motivation, you can have a quick look through and just imagine how good you would feel to own that body.
TRAINING WITH A PARTNER-Training with a like-minded partner can drastically improve your chances of staying on track. Knowing that there is somebody relying on you will to be at the gym will make you less likely to cancel and when they are talking about being strong and all the times they have said no to bad food through the day, you wont want to be the one to admit to having a donut on your lunch break. Improtantly though, you will need to make sure that your goals are the same as there is not much point in goign to the gym to tone up and be there stuck under the bench press whilst he is going for a PR on squats.
MUSIC-Personally i can not train without music. I feel that it seperates me from the ‘grunter’ in the weights area or the two people talking extremely loudly about how much they hate thier boss over on the mats. I find that once my headphones go in, i am in a completely different zone. I manage to block everything else out and i come in with a plan, finish it and leave successfully without getting distracted by the talk of football over near the water fountain by the group of lads. Regardless of what music you listen to, wether it be rock or hip-hop or maybe more chilled out,tranquel kind of relaxing music. Give it a go and see if it helps.
Like i mentioned before, not all of these will apply to every individual. Some people train completely by themselves and will hate any sort of company, whilst some people wont dream to think about entering the gym by themselves. So stop waiting, find out what works for YOU and stay on track!!
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