People join gyms for lots of reasons. One of the main reasons people join ours is the accountability.
Very few people these days are confused about whether or not exercise is good for you. Very few are confused about whether chicken and broccoli makes for a more nutritious meal than pizza and ice cream. And I’d bet at least a third of people who come in to talk to me already have workout equipment at home. So why aren’t we all in peak physical condition?
Because, at least for the people who come to us, nobody is holding them accountable. Nobody is telling them what to do and adjusting the plan for them when needed. Nobody is expecting them to show up at a certain time and place. Nobody is checking on their progress to see if they’re putting in the work.
Whey these people join us and when they find that accountability, everything changes. They start getting results, not because they’re learning new secrets to training, but because they have somebody helping them take action.
But life can sometimes interrupt training. Training is important, but it’s not the most important thing. Maybe you’re a single parent. Maybe you’re caring for an aging family member. maybe the kids are out of school and you don’t have any childcare. There are all kinds of reasons why a busy season of life would mean that formal training at a gym has to stop. And what often happens here is that people cancel their memberships. Sometimes they come back a few months later when things calm down. Sometimes they don’t.
But there’s another option that one of our members just helped co-create with me. She just will not be able to make normal training hours at the gym work this summer. But she doesn’t want to fall out of the habit and end up doing nothing. So we’ve switched her to a plan where she will be doing one 30-minute personal training session every month.
Her goals are around body composition and strength. We came up with a plan together for how she’ll train and eat on her own. She picked a lower body strength movement and an upper body strength movement, and when we get together once each month, we’ll test those lifts and do a biometric scan and check in on her plan.
She still has a plan. She still has accountability. She still has engagement. And when the busy season calms down, she will have still been making progress.
I write all this because I don’t think she’s alone in either the schedule challenges or how she’ll benefit from this plan. We never would have thought of it if she hadn’t asked about it. But now it’s another tool in the toolbox.
If it’s an approach that would help you, talk to your coach about it, or find a coach who will work with you to come up with a flexible plan that fits.
Busy seasons happen to all of us. They key to continued progress is figuring out what to do when the setbacks inevitably come, so that you can make it through them to the other side. Let us know if we can help.