Level Your Learning Curve

Let me tell you a story about three guys I know: Mike, Bill, and Pat. Mike had recently gotten out of the military and his fitness was slipping. Bill, during high school, was a black belt in Tae Kwon Do who trained under a world champion, but again, his fitness slipped once he got to college. Pat was one of the stars of his high school football team, and wanted to get in better shape to prepare to play in college. They decided on a solution, they were going to do P90X together.

You've probably seen commercials for P90X. It's an intense, 3 month circuit training program, that along with the prescribed diet, promises dramatic results. That is, if you can stick with it.

It took less than two weeks for Pat to quit the program. He found that doing P90X on top of his regular football training was just too much.

Within about a month, Mike had abandoned the diet. He found that eating so strictly, compounded by his other life stresses, was too much to handle. He stopped exercising a few weeks after that.

Bill actually completed the entire program. But after that, nothing. For a while, at least. About 6 months later, realizing his fitness was slipping again, he went with the next program in Beach Body's arsenal: Insanity. He did it for about 2 weeks, then gave up because it was too hard.

All three of them failed in their fitness goals for basically the same reason. Not due to any sort of personality defect, judging by their backgrounds they're all perfectly capable of working hard and staying motivated. It was because their plan wasn't sustainable. They threw themselves in the deep end, tried to run before they could walk, so to speak. And, while Bill was able to swim rather than sink initially, his downfall was that he had no endgame. He didn't maintain.

Since then, each of these men has chosen a different path to fitness and has been successful. Mike is back in the military, he runs on a regular basis, and has cleaned up his diet to include less fast food, and more healthy home cooked meals. Bill has been doing Stronglifts for strength training, and Leangains. Pat went off to college and became a successful rugby player.

Which brings me to my point. Getting fit is hard, and it's a long process. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably lying so they can sell you something. Here's where you need to strike a balance, though. On the one hand, you will need to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. On the other hand, set the bar too high and you will inevitably fail.

So, how do we reconcile this? Here are a few tips.

Set goals, and narrow your focus.
The definition of what it means to be fit varies widely from person to person. Low body fat, high muscle mass, strength, flexibility, endurance, speed, being good at a particular sport... these are all valid, but you have to prioritize. If you try to do everything, best case scenario, you become pretty good at everything, but not outstanding at anything. Worst case scenario, you get overwhelmed and don't make significant progress.


Start small, and build from there.
The first few months of my fitness journey was definitely small scale. I got a job, which reduced my opportunity to eat out of boredom. I went to the gym, and just kind of did whatever I felt like. I stopped eating ice cream and microwave chimichangas with cheese sauce all the time. Just doing this, I lost 25lbs in 3 months.

Then I started doing Stronglifts. It's 5 exercises, the weight scheme is written out for you, it's low volume, the weight starts out light. This, in my opinion, is what makes programs like this good for beginners. It starts out easy, and gets hard gradually.

Over the years, my diet and training methods have evolved. They're a lot more complex now. If I had gone from zero to what I do now... it wouldn't have worked.

More difficult does not mean better.
You're probably familiar with the phrase "Work smarter, not harder." While hard work definitely does play a role in fitness, effort doesn't directly correlate to results.

One obvious example of this: Dick Talens, one of my fitness mentors, also struggled with obesity during his early years. One tactic he tried was a low sodium diet. He suffered through bland food and feeling miserable constantly, and still got no results. Why? Because sodium intake doesn't significantly affect fat loss.

For something a little less obvious, you can go to the gym day in and day out, feel exhausted when you leave, sore the next morning, but unless you're incorporating meaningful progression and have your diet in check, it's not going to do thing for you.

Focus on sustainability.
By this, I mean two things primarily. Build habits, and maintain.

One question I see a lot is, "How do you motivate yourself to go to the gym all the time?" My answer: I don't. Why am I going to the gym today? Because it's Wednesday, and that's what I do on Wednesdays.

For me, it was pretty easy to build the habits initially. I genuinely like weightlifting, so getting into it was easy. But, of course, that's not the case with everyone. Not all hope is gone, though. The number one thing I can recommend is finding an activity that you like. It doesn't necessarily have to take place in a gym. Ride your bike, walk your dog, sign up for dance classes or a kickball league.

One tool which helped me as well was Fitocracy. Fitocracy is a workout tracker that also works like a game, giving you points for the workouts you do. It adds a fun element to exercise, which can definitely help get a new person started.

There are also plenty of tricks you can find to help out. My personal favorite, if you want to go to the gym after work, pack all your gym gear, bring it to work, and start drinking your preworkout before you've left the parking lot. By doing all those things, I feel like I've already committed to going to the gym that day. One thing that Terry Crews suggested, that I thought was interesting: Go to the gym, but don't work out. Just focus on building the habit of physically going there first.

As for maintaining, here's an unfortunate statistic: Approximately 80% of people who lose a significant amount of weight regain within a year. I can tell you, this has happened to me more than once. As you approach your goals, you have to develop a maintenance plan.

I believe that part of developing a successful maintenance plan is starting from a sustainable fitness plan. People who go on crash diets seem to be the worst about regaining weight. I read an article recently about contestants from The Biggest Loser. Once they were removed from an environment where they were surrounded by nutritionists and trainers, and were able/forced to train several hours a day, and free of life's other stresses and responsibility, the whole house of cards came down, and they have overwhelmingly regained weight.

The thing that I think helps people the most is forming a new relationship with food and their bodies. Make junk food an occasional thing, not a habitual one. Find ways to stay active. Be conscious of your portions. Be aware of when bad habits come creeping back.