Develop Yo'self

Here’s a hot take from just about 20 years of personal training experience… The perfect plan on paper just about never works.

Why?… Whether it’s a meal plan, a fitness plan, or both… It needs to survive contact with your current life situation.

Can you change and should you change some life situations to accommodate your fitness… Maybe, but for the most part a health and fitness habit need to fit in your life and make the rest of your life easier.

A successful plan is actually an evolving plan, specific to you, where you can slowly snowball positive changes in the right direction.

That’s how you get there sustainably, that’s how you get this process to add value to your life, instead of feeling like it’s taking away from it.

And that’s how you build up wins. That’s how you build confidence in your ability to follow through. You don’t choke yourself out with the “perfect plan”. You start small and you start real.

That’s also why we created the birdie Strong parent package. Silent auctioning off this weekend at the evening of decadent desserts!

Fitness Myth Friday. Here’s one I think we need to kill: if you’re not going all-in, you’re not doing enough.

I see this all the time. People think getting healthy means five workouts a week, meal prep on Sunday, perfect nutrition, 10,000 steps every day…

And if they can’t do all of it, they feel like they’re failing.

But especially if you’re a busy parent, that’s just not real life.

Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is figure out what actually fits your life—and then keep doing it.

Two workouts a week that you can sustain are worth infinitely more than five workouts a week that blow up your life.

You don’t need to go all-in. You need to keep going.

Are you the type who needs someone to press the gas, or someone to press the brakes?

Happy one Wednesday, today’s Wynn comes from two different people. I’m training online. Both of them have histories of starting very intensely, but also stopping very quickly. All or nothing, three weeks or a month of consistency, then stop.

In both these cases, I knew enough to press the brakes. I would much rather see where six months of consistency gets us, then where three weeks of intensity gets us.

In both cases, composition has improved, strength has improved, goals are being accomplished… But more than anything, they are proud of themselves for their consistent investment into themselves. Rather than feeling like a failure for starting and stopping constantly.

Busy times and seasons make for a little distraction sometimes from why we are doing what we’re doing in the gym! And fair enough, some seasons are very difficult and require a lot more from us than others.

One of my greatest roles as a coach, is to keep that vision in front of us as a team. That vision that got us moving in the first place. All the reasons that made you start moving, changing, seeking out help in the first place.

We called this the why that makes you cry. And it’s important to remember, especially as we hit busy and distracting seasons.

Of course, life is not supposed to be about fitness. Our fitness habits are supposed to add to our life. But during season changes and distracting Chapters, we need to double down on why it was important in the first place.

Because sometimes what you need isn’t a new program. It’s to be reminded of the destination that got you moving in the first place.

Fitness Myth Friday… “You can’t go out for dinner when you’re trying to get fit…”

Just not the case! Use moderation, make protein-oriented choices, try to eat as clean as you can… but enjoy….

Also, Get your NEAT up so you can eat! NEAT = Non Exercises Attributed Thermogenesis… a fancy way of saying ‘how many calories your body burns without even moving!’… and how do you get NEAT up??? You build muscle!!!

When Wednesday in effect! September is always really difficult for people. Kids are back in Hockey, kids go back to school, all the systems in your house. Need to change up… This can be stressful and add additional intensity to the season.

Would I like to show somebody, is that it doesn’t take as much as they think in order to maintain and make gains. In fact, sometimes people see tremendous progress by backing off a little bit. Don’t tell the fitness industry that, but it’s true! Especially if you’re in a stage of extreme stress.

Training is an additional stress. Yes it is considered a good stress, eustress, but stress nonetheless, and adds to the bucket. If we can take things down just a notch sometimes we can see amazing progress.

And all the while, making it fit their lifestyle, not wrapping their life around fitness!

One of the most important parts to being a great coach is accepting everyone that comes in and goes through the discomfort that it takes to be vulnerable in a space like this.

Someone’s worth isn’t judged by their fitness or lack their up. Everyone is worthy has great potential. Our job is to meet people where they’re at and help lift them to higher ground.

If you’re needing a hand getting to higher ground, please reach out!

So you think it’s impossible to get fit and healthy as a parent?… Maybe it just takes way less than you think to start making progress in the right direction… Maybe instead of making your life about fitness you can fit health and fitness into your life…

As a parent of three and recovering over trainer, I have realized just how little you have to do to maintain and/or make progress. Don’t give up, but your strategy needs to change.

You need a custom curriculum for yourself, to slowly pick up the lifestyle changes that are necessary to continually take you in a positive direction. And it is more than possible!

Happy Win Wednesday! I’m always sceptical when someone this young comes into the gym… Because I’ve seen all too many times when mom or dad is pushing them into it, rather than them wanting to be here.

I need to see a level of coachability, patient, and desire that will make the investment into my coaching makes sense. And in this case, I was very pleasantly surprised.

On the count of his patients and coachability, this person is now experiencing a level of confidence and aptitude in the gym that is translating to lifting heavier, weights, training more intensely, and seeing that training translate onto the ice.

But it takes time, and the foundations need to be set. You can’t just throw workouts at these kids and heavyweights and expect them to excel. The risk profile is just too high. Instead, we need that aptitude to be nice and high to keep that risk profile down when lifting and training.

Body awareness, patience, curiosity, bracing under load, movement efficiency, technique, lifting psyche… This is all stuff we work on as we progress in an athlete’s, or person’s physical development!!

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