Being new to training can be quite daunting. Many doubts go through your mind. Do I have the discipline to stay the course? Is it going to be too hard? Am I only allowed to eat salad? Am I going to look too bulky? (a common fear for females). This would be no different to the first time you start a new business.
You will have to overcome a lot of doubt and uncertainty, especially at the start. However, reaching your fitness goals is not very different from hitting your business goals. Allow me to explain.
1. Set a Long-term vision with short-term goals
Having a fitness goal requires a long-term vision and many short-term targets along the way. For example, your business goal might be to profit $10 million per year eventually. Now there’s no way you will get there immediately. You would have a projection of maybe making half a million in the first two years, and then a slow but steady. There would be many mini targets along the way to make sure you are keeping on track and keep your focus. And who knows, maybe as you get close to reaching your target, the vision might change, and the target could be 15M.
How does this relate to your fitness goals? Your initial goal might be to lose 20kg of fat. Now that sounds pretty daunting, but that would be the ultimate vision. This is where we use our business mindset and set a target of 0.5-1kg of fat per week, which now makes it sound very easy to achieve and easy to track. This means it would require between 20-40 weeks to achieve your goals, and each week you would make adjustments depending on how well you go. And by the time you lose 10-15kg, your vision might change to 25 or 30kg as you now have more confidence and experience.
2. There are no shortcuts, it’s about consistency
There are no quick fixes. Consistency is key. When running a business, a lot of your success will be determined by your habits and how consistent you are daily. It’s often doing the small things that don’t seem very important that get neglected, but over time, it adds up and will have a huge influence on whether or not your business is successful.
Training is no different. It’s making sure you consistently sleep 7-9 hours, prepare your food, show up to training, and avoid things like alcohol and sugary snacks that will determine if you achieve your long-term goal.
Stay resilient, trust the plan
The night is darkest just before dawn. Business is one of the biggest tests of character. It is very rare for a business owner to have a very linear growth with no setbacks. And the bigger the business, the more up and downs will happen. When you go through the downs, and things seem hard, that’s when you need faith and to be even more committed to the business to get through it. It is often just right around the corner where all the rewards are.
How does this relate to fitness? We are only human. If your goal is big enough, there will always be times when things don’t go your way or your progress stalls, or you go off track and deviate from your meal plan or training plan. Maybe you get sick, and that sets you back a few weeks. This is when having resilience is important.
Many people decide to quit at the first signs of a setback, and it’s the ones that can overcome them, stick to the plan and have faith that is most likely to reach their long goals and create their ideal body. Hire a personal trainer if you need an extra hand.
With all that said, it is still important in business and in fitness to have the right plan. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is executing the plan and staying the course. Suppose your trainer doesn’t help you set small goals to reach your target, constantly check in and remind you to keep doing the small things consistently and keep giving you the courage and the encouragement to keep going when your motivation starts to wane.
In that case, it might be time to start looking for a coach who will. If you don’t have a trainer and struggling with any of the above, please reach out to us to have a chat about your roadblocks to your long-term goals.
