Pain and setbacks can derail progress. Overcoming pain and setbacks requires addressing your why and acknowledging how you feel when you perform healthy habits.
Overcoming Pain and Setbacks: Oh Snap!A client finds himself making progress in all areas of fitness, at the lightest bodyweight in years and working toward specific barbell numbers.
He has a week of stressful work, where sleep was out-of-whack, he sat more than normal, and his schedule was off.
He returns to the gym and during his warm ups feels a tweak and hears a pop.
Training has to change now. Right before he crested the mountain top, he was cutoff at the knees. Suddenly, he found himself letting nutrition, alcohol, and sleep slip too. After all, why was he training now that the clear goals were unachievable?
Overcoming Pain and Setbacks: What is Your Why!?This client's why had really become the weight on the bar. It is easy to get emotionally tied to seeing the numbers go up. The numbers cannot (and will not) always go up.
It is critical to touch on your deeper whys for training. Even if you signed up for coaching or began training with specific numbers in mind - even if you are an elite lifter chasing numbers - you certainly actually have a deeper reason than seeing a larger amount of iron go up.
Overcoming Pain and Setbacks: What Feels Good!?Remembering how you feel when things are going well matters. Yes, the numbers were going up. That was fun. Did you feel good when you were eating healthy, drinking less, and ensuring you got sufficient high-quality sleep?
How did it feel to check off your nutrition, fitness, and health tasks every day?
When considering how you feel and how you felt, think about over a long period of time. Yes, staying up late with alcohol and processed food feels good in the moment. How do you feel that next morning? How does it feel to check your bodyweight on the scale? What do things look like after a couple weeks of these behaviors?
Overcoming Pain and Setbacks: Think of February & March!Think about the future. You may think about running this process through your head - what will things look like if the sloppiness continues for weeks and months?
You might also think about a specific time or place in your future. How do you feel in February after months of excess calories? How do you feel in March (or insert your time here) at that beach vacation?
What feelings arise when someone who has not seen you in awhile sees you and you've gained weight?
Overcoming Pain and Setbacks: Love the ProcessLoving the results without loving the process will cause problems.
Enjoy exposing yourself to discomfort through training. Maybe the weight on the bar is not challenging, but you get to feel a pump. Maybe you don't get a pump, but you have to complete high-repetition exercises you hate - this is voluntary hardship too!
Overcoming pain and setbacks is challenging, but you can do it.
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