Stop measuring your belly, stop weighing yourself and stop before and after pictures.

You can get the body you deserve more easily by not having goals, deadlines or judging yourself.

There’s no need to compete unnecessarily, no point in trying to look good and definitely no gain in forcing yourself to be someone your not.

I’m talking about exercising simply for the joy of it, for how it makes you feel, for keeping it an adventure. Just….be!

I’ve seen the greatest difference in my clients when they adopt my training methodology and take the burden of expectation away. And you know that when they change their thinking, they always made training stick and had a great time doing it!

I’ll give you 2 examples of clients, the first is a client I had who basically, was their own worst enemy and couldn’t train for fun. The second is a client who started training with the ‘I want to look like that person’ pressurised mindset, but slowly took on my advice and now, 6 years later is a totally different beast.

Ok…client number 1.

I guess it was around 2 years ago now that I took on a client that, despite my best efforts to convince them to ditch the goal orientated mindset, always struggled with low self esteem and an extremely competitive nature. They would turn up for training and throughout the hour would harass me on why they weighed 2lbs more than last week, complain that they weren’t seeing results quickly enough, question why they were doing every little thing and basically, be a huge pain in the neck!

This client finally hammered the message home for me. After a while, and through understanding, it became concerning and also tiring training these sorts of clients, repeatedly seeing how hard they were making it for themselves. Fighting the natural way of things with an ego dominated mindset. Almost not enjoying it, just going through the motions to get to where they wanted. It’s crazy when you think about it, we are given this amazing body and the chance to really enjoy our health and yet many people choose to make it a competitive struggle.

I’m convinced that many people force themselves to train in a competitive way when they don’t really want to. Chasing dreams and delusions. Measuring themselves against others. My life in fitness has proved this to be fact. When you take away the competitive nature, you 100% get to your destination happier and with real and lasting results.

Client number 2 was just like client number 1 at first. They wanted it all, Fitness gains right away with express delivery. It was the same drawn out affair as I’d turn up to train another of the ‘now, now, now’ brigade. Slowly but surely however, they began to listen to my advice and started to see training as a journey ranger than a chore.

The joy of loving exercise purely for its own sake, and it became a pleasure to train them once more. It’s really just about keeping things simple, not striving and just being. 6 years later, I often see client number 2 out running now. No longer feeling the need for a personal trainer they have become a self-sufficient beast!

I hope my blog has made sense!

This methodology can be applied to any ability. Newcomers to exercise or even seasoned athletes, (yes even them!) everyone can benefit from a more relaxed and natural approach to exercise. I always say to my clients; ‘you either do it or you don’t,’ So why make the mission unenjoyable with goals and targets? Your going to do it, or not, anyway!

Try to see the starry eyed adventure in exercise again. Remember when you were younger and had less ambition? You just ‘lived’ and did stuff right? See how relevant that is to you right now. Imagine the possibilities when you take the hurdles away!

To put this into practice – next time you go to a class, or a run or whatever exercise it is that you do -Just do the class for the joy of it, or go for your run then come home and forget it. Don’t immediately weight yourself or look at how many calories you burned, just remember the feeling and the good time you had, it’s enough.

Let me know if this helps you. It can be hard to change your training methodology, especially if you’ve been a competitive person for a long time, (I was one too!) but be brave and realise that your world will open up when you allow it to. When it happens, training becomes a journey again. You won’t get more unfit or bigger if you take the pressure off, rather the opposite!