3 Things Every Training Program Must Have for Long Term Results
3 Things Every Training Program Must Have for Long Term Results
When it comes to your health and fitness, your training/exercise/movement routine can make all the difference. Yes, nutrition is a massive component to your health, but we're human, and movement is a big part of being human.
For some of us, the idea of always exercising is easy to achieve. Some people just genuinely love training, while others have a love/hate relationship with training, but do it because they're so driven and focused on a goal. But for many people, exercising is a love/mostly hate relationship. Maybe it's just the thought of exercise, maybe it's the sweat or heat, maybe it's other people, and maybe it's because they've had a bad experience with training in the past. This usually means an injury that ruined any motivation or ability to train, or the drying up of results, leading to frustration.
Either way, achieving results and continuous progress with our training requires us to be consistent with it over a long time.
But how do you stay consistent when it seems all coaches or facilities are trying to push you as hard as they can all the time?
Marketing is Story Telling
Somewhere along the way in the fitness industry, we changed our marketing. We changed the story we were telling.
You see, we listened to what clients wanted. That's a good thing of course, but the answer started to become "we want results sooner!". And so, we started to give shorter and shorter ways to help you "get the body you've always dreamed of". This started a vicious cycle. People wanted better bodies quicker, so all they saw were promotions for shorter and shorter challenges and programs, so then everyone expected to get better bodies quicker. All ways to get people in the door sooner and hope they stayed afterwards.
It makes sense; commit to a short term process, see some results and you'll want to stay longer.
These tactics worked for both the client and the businesses. Clients saw quick results, businesses got people in the door paying initially, with many staying beyond the initial challenge.
But, as an industry, we missed something.
We thought clients wanted a better body, and that's it. There was nothing more to what they wanted. But we failed to dig a little deeper to find out why. Why do you want a better body? Why do you want to get stronger? So we focused on the short term, the thing clients wanted, but forgot about the thing the client needed.
Caring about what a client needs may seem like an extra step or more work than is required, but when we deliver short term results, why should a client stay longer? What value does the client get? This becomes simply a transaction, instead of becoming a relationship. We could empower clients to maintain their results for the long term, but we deliver short term band aid's which help for the short term, but never have the life changing effect we could have.
This is not wrong or bad. This can still have a huge impact on your life, but it is also a missed opportunity.
Another Option
Of course, it's unlikely you will stay with a coach or business for a really long time. It's not impossible, but it doesn't happen often. Our lives change, even the coach or business itself changes. But the aim, I believe for the coach or business, should be for you to stay as long as possible and/or the coach to be fired because you feel so empowered and have so much knowledge, that you can walk the journey on your own (and maybe even empower others to change their lives too).
This goes against what most of the industry is doing. This is hard work, this is time consuming, but from a business perspective, and from you the client, this is the very best result each of you could get.
If all you truly want is short term results focused solely on your physical attributes, keep following the current process. Again, this isn't bad, but if you are searching for a richer experience, you might need to look a little further.
Motivation and Purpose
Part of the intake process here at PEAK Strength & Nutrition is about understanding your purpose. Understanding your why.
Motivation is often how people start their fitness journey. Something is a catalyst; the new year, a break up or bad news. This motivation is essential, but it can be fleeting.
Training is a long process, it's often difficult and can be stressful, and when tested, sometimes motivation isn't enough to keep us going. But if we can have a clear purpose as to why we are training, we can lean on this purpose to keep us going, especially on those cold winter mornings or after a long day at work when we're already tired. This can be summarised in this simple question: why will you turn up to the training when you don't feel like it?
It's always easier to choose that feeling and not show up when we're unclear of our true intentions and goals. Think of it this way: many people really want to lose weight, but they didn't really want to put it on in the first place. The ease, or lack of effort we make to put on fat can happen again. It is the same ease or lack of effort required to not train. The idea of "losing weight" being the motivation isn't enough. There is a deep reason why, and finding that can not only help us to lose the weight, but stop us from putting it back on again in the future.
If we can find the purpose for training, then we are well on our way to achieving our goals. The program or type of training we follow needs to support us as well; a program that doesn't push us, provided progression and is we find enjoyable, will lead to us either changing where we train, or quitting all together. From 4+ years of training clients, I believe these three basic things that each training program, facility or coach needs to provide to help you be consistent and training for a long time, so they can to help you achieve the results you are both working together for a long time!
Challenging
You could say that all training is challenging, but if the measure of challenge is how much you sweat, then all coaches should just add burpees. Instead the training needs to be challenging for your level of experience. So when you get put into a class with close to 20 other people, minimal rest periods (minimal rest often means form is the first thing sacrificed), then yes the training is challenging but it can also be off-putting and frustrating.
As we become accustomed to the training, soon the challenge becomes much easier to manage. We are then presented with a new set of circumstances; how do we keep it challenging? Is it through variety? Is it through doing things faster or heavier? Or are we getting challenged with how much we're sweating or how tired we feel again? Does this mean the training is only challenging during hot summer days?
Beyond how difficult training feels based on heart rate, training can also be challenging as we learn new things, or as we are tested in different ways. In this way, a hard session may actually mean learning something which hard to master.
This is different for everyone of course, which is why classes can be tough places to train, and why challenge, and the next point Progress, are so closely linked.
Progression/Growth
Change sometimes get confused for growth or progress, so when we see initial change we're motivated (this is a great thing) but often progression stalls. Why? Because there is no planning for progression to occur.
Growth is planned, intentional and focused. Change happens no matter what. You might think this is false, but change isn't always the type we want. Sometimes we want to look awesome, but instead put on more fat. This is change, but not necessarily the progression we want.
Training needs to have progression. The model of eating less and moving more works at the start of the process, but there's only so little you can eat, and so much you can move, before it all become unsustainable.
The way progress is measured can also lead to frustration and what feels like failure. More often than not, fat loss is the goal for clients, so the only thing measured is either weight loss or fat loss. But we can progress in so many ways while we are losing fat. Further to this, fat loss isn't a linear process, so when the only thing that's actually being measured starts to stall, it can get disheartening.
Part of what I focus on here is habits and behaviours, as these are the things that help us achieve our goals and maintain them in the long term. They can also be measured; how is our adherence to certain behaviours? What behaviours have changed since we started working together? What behaviours work for you?
Enjoyable
A massive part of training is actually enjoying the process; all of it. The good parts and the not-so-good parts. Along the way though, people have confused this with fun. The results is many training styles, businesses and coaches who offer fun training without the challenge or progress. This in itself isn't a bad thing, as something is better than nothing when it comes to training, I'm just unsure how long you can sustain a training program that isn't providing the challenge you want and need.
I use the word enjoyment though, because there are times during training that need to be hard. This is a requirement for growth as a human being. The truth is, the hard training isn't always fun, but it's a part of the process which you enjoy doing.
This also means you will choose a style of training which you enjoy. So if you find the process of powerlifting enjoyable, you will choose powerlfiting. If you enjoy high intensity interval training, you will choose that. There may be fun elements in both which may even look similar, but the two are very different styles. Yet, different people will enjoy both equally.
Enjoyment can come from the style of training, the challenge itself, the results, the people or the environment, but the more you enjoy the entire process, the more likely I believe you will be able to stick to the process and get better results.
Bonus: Community
Community is something I focus on a lot more now here at PEAK Strength & Nutrition. Crossfit has been so successful partly because of the strong community they have created. It's easy to think then the Crossfit model needs to be followed.
But...
People do online training all the time, with no connection to anyone else except their coach. Yes there are some coaches who offer Facebook groups*, but many don't. In fact, some coaches will simply check in once a fortnight to make sure you're on track. I have personally done online training through Ben Pakulski, Zach Even-Esh and John Romaniello, and at no point did I feel the need to be part of a community. I wanted expertise, I wanted guidance, but I wasn't expecting any of those coaches to give me a call and say "what up bro?".
The point is: all of those training programs were Challenging, helped me Progress and I Enjoyed the training. So while community is a massive key to a great training experience, I don't believe it will help for long if the training is too easy or too hard, provides you personally with no progress, and you find it boring.
Does your training include all these things? Are you still feeling challenged with your training? How is your progress being measured? Do you still find it enjoyable?
If you’re looking for training that will keep you getting results while providing an awesome community of like minded people, simply fill out the form below.
*this is network connection/community, which is worth something, but not nearly as much as face to face human interaction, and it takes minimal emotional investment.
Are you interested in finding out more about how you can get resultsin your training, with your habits and behaviours, and develop better mental health?
Simply book in for an Intake Interview by filling out the form below.
HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL RECEIVE WHEN YOU JOIN PEAK
Access to the Fundamentals Program: Not just one session covering all you need to learn, but up to 8 sessions of programming to take you from beginner to knowledgable or to improve you current training methods.
Vision Casting Session: Beyond your normal goal setting session, this will be cover your goals AND provide you the blueprint and habits required to achieve your goals across multiple areas of life.
Free Custom Nutrition Plan: A nutrition plan not only based on your goals, but also on your current schedule and capacity, the nutrition will be designed for you.
Unlimited Access to Coaches: Access to coaches for help with training, nutrition or mindset
Access to In Depth Mobility Library: learn how to take care of your own body with a 50+ video exercise archive that will help you feel great from head to toe!
Free goodies such as shirts, books, sweat towels: look and feel the part not only with your training and nutrition, but with your accessories too!
And much more…
Simply fill out the form on the right and I’ll be in contact with you within 24 hours to discuss the best time for the interview. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have before the interview as well.
