Know your limitations but also know to push them

Being fit is all about pushing yourself, but also knowing that you have limits. So it’s a balancing act of sorts.

Back when I was in the forces, it was all about pushing myself to my limit. Rightly so. Earning your green beret is all about exactly that.

Real life doesn’t work that way though. We all have jobs, families and commitments so we need to pay attention to our limitations. Hence the balancing act.

Sadly, from what I’ve seen in almost 10 years of being a PT. Very few people manage to get this balancing act right. Way over half fall off either end of the spectrum.

The overly cautious

Like I said, I’ve seen many fall off either end, lots sway towards the ‘overly cautious’ cliff edge. The percentage of people who are simply unwilling to ‘push themselves ‘ is huge. I guess it’s the ‘fight or flight’ mechanism of our phycology, (amateur phycologist alert). Just to make it clear, I’m basically talking about people who find it difficult to push themselves when they exercise.

How to fix being overly cautious when you train

If your this type of person. The next time you find yourself exercising, instead of staying in your happy and comfortable place, push that little bit harder! Breathe harder and feel uncomfortable, know that everybody hurts the same as you. Have a power phrase that you utter, over and over in your head if you really struggle (stay on top of it, stay on top of it, stay on top of it). When you’ve completed the workout, mentally reward yourself rather than retreating from it. Try really hard to stop associating harder exercise to a negative response, look at it optimistically as a good thing. Suck it up. Your world will open up and grow that little bit bigger when you do this!

The over pushers

At the other end, is the people who never know quite when to stop. When enough is enough. These can be people at any end of the fitness spectrum, any ability. From elite athletes who struggle to rest enough to weekend warriors. The classic problem I see is clients who have trained a certain way for a long time and get into a training ‘black hole’. They stop seeing results as their training plateaus and get into a vicious cycle. Instead of taking a step back, they push on in ‘perceived hardness’ and the cycle continues.

How to fix being an over pusher

It’s rather obvious but the way to fix this is to take a step back and assess things. Do something that you’ve struggled to do, just stop. I’m guessing you train hard and have stopped seeing gains. For gods sake simply listen to your body! Recovery weeks may need factoring in, massage and cross-training to allow your body to adapt. Always remember, you’ve gone down a road, now your at a dead end, what you’ve been doing hasn’t worked and it’s time to try something new.

I think that’s the main message of this blog. Change. Changing what you do. It feels blooming uncomfortable at first because your ‘training monkey’ will throw a hissy fit as it seems like hard work. Your ego will not want to change its ways as its nice and happy where it is, I suppose it depends on what you truly want. Are you happy being who you are, or are you not?

That’s it for today’s rather harsh blog. Just be happy with who you are. Take it easy folks and remember to be slightly better than the person you were yesterday